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Short Stuff: Exploring Irish Monk · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Dave's here in spirit. So that's a short stuff quorum.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: That's all you need. And this is short stuff. That's right,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and we're here. We're here to dispel the rumor that
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus discovered America. That's so old. That is pretty old.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Are we really going to talk about that? No, No,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: we don't have to do that. That was definitely a
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: two thousand eightish two thousand nine is kind of thing
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to say. But what are we going to dispel? Well,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: so I think one of the things we should at
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: least say, because not everybody knows this is like the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: first Europeans definitively to reach North America. We're the Vikings.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of people know that, but not
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: everybody knows that, Chuck. Not everybody knows that there's a
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Viking settlement that was discovered. I think they suspected for
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a long time because I think in the North Sagas
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: they basically said, yeah, we made it to Newfoundland, um
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: that the Vikings actually had made it to North America.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: And then finally in the sixties, I think they found
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a real deal bona fide, totally incontrovertible Viking settlement from
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: about one thousand CE at a place called Lanceo Meadows,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: which I've always wanted to go to because I've always
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: wanted to go to to Newfoundland for one, but to
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: see like a Viking settlement in America would just that
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: would be something else that would be great. We could
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: go berserker, right, take a bunch of shrooms, get a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: battle axe. Yeah, and and then celebrate the fact that
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: they were the very controvertibly, the very first Europeans to
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: touch that soil. And that's I was gonna wrap up
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: short stuff. You're right, there is a chance that the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Vikings were even beat So the Vikings would have beat
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the age of exploration by about five hundred years. There's
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: a theory, and it's got some legs conceivably that somebody
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: else beat the Vikings by five years themselves, and that
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: some sometime in about the sixth century showed up somewhere
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: in North America. And who was that? Chuck the Oirish
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And I don't buy this, but I think it's a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: great story. You don't buy it, and now I think
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: it is folklore. But we'll we'll talk about it anyway,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: because it is a fun story. But in the sixth century,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: as the story legend tail goes, St. Brendan was an
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Irish monk, very good sailor and seafair, uh very what
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: saley saintly, saintly and saley. Yeah, supposedly undertook this this voyage,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: a joyous voyage of joyage, and with some fellow monks
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: and went looking for paradise, the land of promise of
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the Saints, And after seven years came upon what he
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: thought was this place, an island so vast that they
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: did not reach the far shore after forty days of
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: walking the head a river that was too wide to
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: be crossed, a forested, wooded land with lush fruits, and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: he and the fellows filled their boats full of gems
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and returned home. So the Irish found it first, Yeah,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And I mean, like, if you like he ain't talking
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: about the Azores, you can definitely walk across them in
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: forty days. There's not a lot of islands in between
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Ireland and North America, so it's really not clear. Uh
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: you know what same Brendan was talking about where he went,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and he wasn't like a dummy. He didn't accidentally stumble
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: onto Europe like he sailed to Europe before. He was
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: like a skilled navigator. So he is assumed as presumed
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: to know have known enough that he knew what direction
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: he was traveling in and that this really was like
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: an all new place that that that his kind had
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: never set foot in before. That's right. And in the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: ninth century, so several hundred years later, there was an
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: this account, actual an account of this sir fist called
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Travels of St. Brendan Uh Navigatio sancti brendani magna carta
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: master charge. If you take the bus, we all take
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the bus. Uh. It was a big hit. It was
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: translated into a bunch of languages, and um, you know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: it was the account of the journey. They are all
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: sorts of crazy things in here, which, um, maybe we
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: should save that for the second half because that's where
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: it falls apart a bit with me. But should we
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the vikings, uh, maybe lending
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: some support to this idea? Sure? Yeah, Um, so the
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: North have those sagas that I was talking about right
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: where it's basically like we did this, this is neat,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: this is cool. Here's something else we did, and there's
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: like a lot of um, there's a lot of uh
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: like cre credulity to it, Like there's it's not just
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: like um Norse mythology, that's almost like a separate thing,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: although it's definitely intertwined. Like they they think that these
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: are actual historical documents in a lot of cases, or
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: at least have a large kernel of historicity in them.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And so in those sagas they talked about arriving in
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Greenland around a thousand see, around the same time they
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: would have set up the place in Newfoundland, um, and
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: finding Irish missions that were already there. It's a little odd.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: And and also we should say the Norse were familiar
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: with the Irish already, so they would have known in
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Irish mission if they came upon an Irish mission. Yeah. Sure,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: So that that would suggest that the Irish beat them
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to Greenland at least, which is pretty pretty significant. Yeah.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: There was another saga where they talked about meeting some
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: of the Native Americans who already had seen white men.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: They're like, we know guys like you, and we've encountered
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: guys sort of like you. They were dressed in white
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  Speaker 1: and they came from Land across from their own or
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: our own I guess if I'm in character. And then
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  Speaker 1: there was a third saga that talks about the Norse
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: encountering a tribe of Native Americans who spoke a language
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: that even sounded like Irish. Right, So a lot of
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: little clues here. Yeah, these are recorded by the North
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and they definitely do suggest that there was possibly some
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Irish who made their way over to the New World
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: before the Vikings even did. But like you said, there
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: is a lot of um. There's a heaping helping of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: folklore along with all of this, and for people like you, Chuck,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: it breaks down everything. I like to hold out hope
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: that this is possible and true. And let's talk about
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: it a little more after these commercial breaks. All right,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: we're in a divided camp. How divided? Uh? This is
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: when the petroglyph comes in. Barry Fell, who was a
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: marine biologist at Havid University, found some petroglyphs, which are
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: rock carved writings in West Virginia, and he said, you
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: know what these are. This is ogam script. This is
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: this is an Irish alphabet and it was used from
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: the sixth to the eighth century. And I even think
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I know what it's saying. They're talking about the Christian
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Nativity write on a rock, sure, and that's Irish, clearly, Uh,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: it's not, you know, from Native Americans. And Fell said, here,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: everyone take a look at this stuff. And the academic
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: world said, I don't know about that. I don't even
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: know if this, I don't know about your methods is
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: definitely not a fact, I said, aren't you a marine biologists? Exactly?
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And this could be ogam script, but it's really not
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: proving anything. No, so the the it's still not definitively
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: been shown. Who wrote that. It's called the Horse Creek
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: petroglyphs near Clear Fork, West Virginia, UM And they don't
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: know who wrote it. But I think the local um
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Archaeological Society came out and said it's pretty racist to
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: assume that rather than the local indigenous people leaving these petroglyphs,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: that it was some mythical Irish um monk who made
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: his way over here allegedly rather than the people we
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: know we're here in this area at that time. UM.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: But regardless of whether that's the case or not, like
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: no one has said, oh, well, it was these people
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and this is what it said, So there's still definitely
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: room for speculation. But from what I understand, there's there's
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: virtually no academic who who believes that this is in
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: fact ogham script, and even if it is an ogam,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that it doesn't necessarily talk about the Nativity, so we
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: can kind of discard that as evidence, like there's there's
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: not certainly not in controvertible evidence of Irish presence because
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of that those petroglyphs. Yeah, and where it follows apart
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: for me, but not not. I've been thinking about it,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: maybe not completely. Is when you start to look at
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the account the Navagaccio, the Travels of St. Brendan, which
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: was the account of his voyage, it is it is
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: really out there and wacky. It talks about an island
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: with an Ethiopian devil, an island with monks who celebrated
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Christmas who were just there. Uh, they fought a griffin
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: at one point and killed a griffin, um, all kinds
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of fantastical stuff. They went to one island and set
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: up camp and then it turned out, oh, my goodness,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: is not an island. We're actually on a giant whale.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So let's hold communion so let's have communion. I don't
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: know if that was where the communion was. It was
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: a bunch of whale stuff, but they definitely held communion
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: on a whale at some point. It might have been
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: that chapter. But it's kind of crazy stuff. And I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: started looking into it. There were what it is is
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: an Irish im ram, which were the seventh and eighth
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: century uh seafaring adventure tales written by the Irish, and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: it fits in with that, and so I immediately dismissed.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I was like, no, this is just an uh m
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: rom and it's you know, it's just made up. But
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe not. Maybe it took the style
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: of that because that was what was popular, and maybe
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: it really did happen, but it just they gussies it
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: up with these fantastical tales. They dressed it up. Yeah.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: And then Navogaccio was written about two to three hundred
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: years after St. Brennan would have lived, right, so it
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: certainly wasn't his own account of it. But the it's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: almost like, to me, it's almost like Hamilton's Like if
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: you came along and saw Hamilton's the musical, You're like,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. They didn't rap right. Um, You're like,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: there's a larger point to and that there was a
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: person named Alexander and Alexander Hamilton's he did do these things,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: you know, but it is dressed up to make it
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: palatable or understandable to people at the time and then embellished.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, although I don't think Alexander Hamilton's would have
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: given commune on the back of a whale. Um, but
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: it's still in the same ballpark. And to me, just
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: because somebody came along and dressed it up with with folklore,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: clearly folklore doesn't mean that there's It doesn't remove the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: possibility that there is a lot of kernels of truth
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: still in there somewhere. Yeah, I kind of, I kind
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: of got there during the last eight minutes. I'm glad
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: about that. What is interesting is one of the things
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that they kind of used to say no, this probably
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: couldn't have happened was the fact that the sailing technology
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: at the time, the boating technology that he would have
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: likely used is this little boat called a curoc and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: it a see you are are a c h and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: it's this you know, it's a it's a homemade boat.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Basically made out of wood with an ox hide and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: like tar and stuff to put it together. And they're like,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: there's no way this guy could have made it that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: far in one of these crocs, and in UH, an author,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: an adventurer named Tim Severin, said, you know what, I'm
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: going to see if this is possible, And he built
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: one of those, supposedly in the style that they would
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: have built them back then, and he retraced that route
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that Brendan is believed to have taken from Ireland to
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Iceland and Greenland and eventually Newfoundland, and he made it. Yeah,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: he showed it is entirely possible. And again this this
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: same Brendan was supposed to be a very skilled navigator.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So it's possible at least that that that happened if
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: sing Brendan actually did exist. Like many stuff you should know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: shorties the ends with a big shoulder shrug, a big
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: shoulder shrug, puffy question mark with a heart for the dot. Amen. Uh.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: And by the way, you can read this article um
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: that we found on how stuff works. I wrote it
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: myself back in the day and with that short Stuff
• 13:13
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