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Disc Men · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of curiosities. In Greek mythology, Minos was
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  Speaker 1: born to Zeus and Europa. He became the first king
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  Speaker 1: of Crete, the largest of the Greek islands, where he
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  Speaker 1: didn't exactly rule with kindness. Every nine years he would
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  Speaker 1: demand another ruler to send seven boys and seven girls
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  Speaker 1: into the labyrinth. The labyrinth was a kind of maze
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  Speaker 1: created four Minos by the craftsman Dedalus, and within its
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  Speaker 1: elusive center lived the king's son, the Minotaur, a creature
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  Speaker 1: possessing the body of a man and the head of
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  Speaker 1: a bull. King Minos, his labyrinth, and his minutes or
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  Speaker 1: were all just stories, fables about gods and goddesses to
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  Speaker 1: help explain how Greece had come to be. However, to
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  Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks, they were more than just stories. They
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  Speaker 1: were legendary tales of good and evil, about deities that
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  Speaker 1: were worshiped by the masses. And if you look at
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  Speaker 1: the ruins and remnants left behind by the early Greeks,
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  Speaker 1: you start to wonder if they ever really were stories
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  Speaker 1: at all. When English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans found the
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  Speaker 1: Palace of Canosis, he called upon his knowledge of Greek
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  Speaker 1: myths to aid in his search. He named the ancient
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  Speaker 1: people who once lived there Minoans, after King Minos, and
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  Speaker 1: then worked for several years excavating a large palace at
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  Speaker 1: the site. By nineteen o five, the work had been completed,
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  Speaker 1: and through it Sir Arthur had learned much about the
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  Speaker 1: people who once lived in what he called the Palace
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  Speaker 1: of Minos. But it wouldn't be until several years later
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight, when an Italian archaeologist by the
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  Speaker 1: name of Luigi Parnier would find a new piece of
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  Speaker 1: a very perplexing puzzle. Louis g had been digging around
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  Speaker 1: in the basement of one of the buildings set off
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  Speaker 1: from the main palace, when he found a small disc
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  Speaker 1: only six inches in diameter. The circular object featured over
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  Speaker 1: two hundred impressions of hyrid glyphs arranged clockwise in a
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  Speaker 1: spiral pattern. He called it the Face Dose Disc. As
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  Speaker 1: with many archaeological discoveries concerning ancient cultures, the first inclination
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  Speaker 1: was to write the face dose disc off as a fake.
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  Speaker 1: Many historical objects had been revealed as forgeries or hoaxes,
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  Speaker 1: and there was no reason not to think the same
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  Speaker 1: about this one. But surprisingly most scholars agreed it was legitimate.
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  Speaker 1: One reason for that was the later discovery of an
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  Speaker 1: axe nearby bearing similar glyphs as the disc. The two
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  Speaker 1: forty two impressions or tokens were comprised of forty five
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  Speaker 1: numbered symbols, each one unique. These symbols stood for common
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  Speaker 1: things like person or child or arrow. Yet despite their
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  Speaker 1: clear pictorial intent, every actual decipherment of the disc had
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  Speaker 1: been unsuccessful. Amateur archaeologists had tried everything, turning the disc
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  Speaker 1: as they read it, proposing possible stories it might have told,
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  Speaker 1: but nothing seemed to work. It was thought for decades
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  Speaker 1: that the disc might never be translated successfully at all
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  Speaker 1: if more symbols couldn't be found elsewhere, either increte or
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  Speaker 1: in the palace itself, or perhaps from where they originated.
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  Speaker 1: Because a scholar back in the nineteen twenties claimed the
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  Speaker 1: clay that had been used to form the disc hadn't
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  Speaker 1: come from crete at all, but from somewhere else in
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  Speaker 1: the a G and C. There may be more out there,
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  Speaker 1: but we don't know where. However, in two thousand fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: two linguists claimed they broke the code. Dr Gareth Owens,
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  Speaker 1: a researcher from Crete, and John Coleman, a professor of
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  Speaker 1: phonetics at Oxford University, worked together for six years analyzing
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  Speaker 1: what Owens referred to as the first Minoan c d ram.
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  Speaker 1: Early theories about the disc proposed that it had been
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  Speaker 1: a story to entertain readers, declaration of war, a game
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  Speaker 1: of some kind, or even a math amadical equation, but
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  Speaker 1: Owens and Coleman figured out the trick to deciphering it.
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  Speaker 1: They read it in a spiral direction, working their way
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  Speaker 1: from the outside edge to the center, and compared the
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  Speaker 1: glyphs to Cretan hieroglyphics as well as ancient Greek writings.
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  Speaker 1: What they came up with were three words, which translated
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  Speaker 1: to pregnant mother, shining mother, and goddess. According to Owens
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  Speaker 1: and Coleman, the face those disc wasn't a story or
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  Speaker 1: a call to arms, but a prayer to a Minoan goddess.
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  Speaker 1: It might not be as riveting a conclusion as some
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  Speaker 1: had hoped for, but Thanks to the work of these
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  Speaker 1: two language experts, we now have a greater insight into
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  Speaker 1: an unknown religion of an ancient culture. Just don't ask
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  Speaker 1: me to try and read the disc it turns out
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  Speaker 1: it's all Greek to me. Some people are just born
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  Speaker 1: within eight talent Mozart began composing when he was only
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  Speaker 1: five years old. Blaze Pascal, the French mathematician, wrote his
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  Speaker 1: first theorem when he was only eleven, and British philosopher
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  Speaker 1: John Stuart Mill had already learned to speak several dead
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  Speaker 1: languages by the time he was eight. Andrew was born
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  Speaker 1: in blooming Grove, New York, and he took a little
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  Speaker 1: longer to find his calling. Born in eighteen twenty six,
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  Speaker 1: he had received only five months of formal classroom education
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  Speaker 1: by the age of seventeen. His father had been an alcoholic,
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  Speaker 1: and Andrew, along with his mother and sister, had to
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  Speaker 1: find work wherever they could to keep a roof over
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  Speaker 1: their heads. The young man was a cobbler's apprentice by trade,
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  Speaker 1: and found other odd jobs around town so his family
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  Speaker 1: could stay afloat. He'd been in Poughkeepsie, New York in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen forty three when he attended some lectures on hypnotism
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  Speaker 1: from mesmerist J. S. Grimes. At the time, mesmerism was
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  Speaker 1: referred to as animal magnetism, and the prevailing theory was
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  Speaker 1: that every living thing on earth was born with the
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  Speaker 1: ability to influence other creatures. Some could even use that
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  Speaker 1: power to heal. Andrew believed that he possessed special powers,
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  Speaker 1: specifically the ability to read minds. He explored these possibilities
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  Speaker 1: for the next three years, calling himself the Poughkeepsie Seer,
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  Speaker 1: as he practiced his own form of medicine. He used
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  Speaker 1: his psychic site to diagnose sick people and to speak
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  Speaker 1: with spirits from beyond the grave. In eighteen forty four,
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  Speaker 1: Andrew woke up in the Catskills, claiming he'd gone into
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  Speaker 1: a trance only hours before, where he spoke to Galen,
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  Speaker 1: the Greek physician considered to be the father of modern medicine.
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  Speaker 1: Though relatively uneducated himself, that didn't stop Andrew from writing
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  Speaker 1: books about magnetic healing, many of which dictated to others
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  Speaker 1: while in a trance. His first book, Principles of Nature,
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  Speaker 1: sold one thousand copies in the week after its release.
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  Speaker 1: One reason for its success, Davis wasn't a scholar. He
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  Speaker 1: was a below average man born with above average skills,
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  Speaker 1: and that made him appealing to the masses. If he
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  Speaker 1: could become some kind of mental superhero, and so could
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  Speaker 1: anyone else. Unfortunately, while his books were financially successful, they
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  Speaker 1: were a critical flop, especially among the intellectual crowd. Critics
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  Speaker 1: didn't take his work seriously, often citing factual errors as
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  Speaker 1: well as jargon filled ramblings better suited towards science fiction
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  Speaker 1: than credible textbooks. Things weren't looking good for Andrew Jackson Davis.
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  Speaker 1: He even had to run in with the author Edgar
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  Speaker 1: Allan Poe, who didn't care much for his brand of Shenanigans.
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  Speaker 1: Poe wrote a short story just before his death called
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  Speaker 1: Milanta Tata that featured a character named Martin van Buren
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  Speaker 1: Mavis the two Keepsie Seer, a nice little dig at
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  Speaker 1: the man whose trance sessions had influenced another story of his,
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  Speaker 1: The Facts in the Case of m Valdemar. Poe had
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  Speaker 1: written that one the very same year he and Davis
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  Speaker 1: had first met, but Davis and Poe eventually fell out
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  Speaker 1: of favor with one another. The Poughkeepsie Seer had grown
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  Speaker 1: too positive for the Baltimore Native Zee. Davis had moved
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  Speaker 1: past seances and spiritual contact. It wasn't just a medium anymore.
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  Speaker 1: He was a progressive thinker and the founder of a movement,
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  Speaker 1: one he coined in his magnum opus, The Great Harmonia.
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  Speaker 1: A concept was called the law of attraction, and it
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  Speaker 1: was much different from the law of attraction we know today.
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  Speaker 1: To Davis, the spirits he contacted during a seance would
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  Speaker 1: only be attracted to his attempts if they shared the
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  Speaker 1: characteristics and intentions of the other living people present. Later on,
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  Speaker 1: as mesmerism fell out of fashion, the term evolved to
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  Speaker 1: be more about earthly prosperity for those with positive attitudes.
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  Speaker 1: But Andrew Jackson Davis gave us two more things before
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  Speaker 1: his death in nineteen ten, in the form of predictions
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  Speaker 1: and his book Penetralia, published in eighteen fifty six. Davis wrote,
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  Speaker 1: look out about these days for carriages and traveling saloons
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  Speaker 1: on country roads, without horses, without steam, without any visible
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  Speaker 1: motive power, moving with greater speed and far more safety
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  Speaker 1: than at present. He said, these machines would move with
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  Speaker 1: the help of a mixture of gas and liquid that
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  Speaker 1: ignited safely within their shells. He also mentioned in the
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  Speaker 1: same book a type of machine that could automatically transcribe
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  Speaker 1: words for him. He called it a soul writer. And
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  Speaker 1: he said, and I quote, it may be constructed something
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  Speaker 1: like a piano one brace or scale of keys to
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  Speaker 1: represent the elementary sounds, so that a person, instead of
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  Speaker 1: playing a piece of music, may touch off a sermon
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  Speaker 1: or a poem. In other words, the uneducated cobbler from
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  Speaker 1: upstate New York didn't just learn how to talk to
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  Speaker 1: the dead. He predicted the automobile and the typewriter decades
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  Speaker 1: before they were revealed to the rest of the world.
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  Speaker 1: Quite the progressive thinker. Indeed, I hope have enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.