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Combing Through History · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Like a lot of people, I had fun dabbling with
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  Speaker 1: pig Latin when I was a kid. It was probably
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  Speaker 1: my first foray into speaking in code. And even though
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  Speaker 1: pig Latin isn't exactly the most secretive language out there,
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  Speaker 1: it is part of what made me interested in cryptography now.
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  Speaker 1: The word cryptography can be broken down into two parts,
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  Speaker 1: crypt meaning hidden, and graphy meaning writing. The practice of
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  Speaker 1: hiding mess by writing in code has been traced back
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  Speaker 1: all the way to ancient Egypt, and cryptography has played
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  Speaker 1: a role in major events throughout history. Take World War II,
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  Speaker 1: for example, the German Army broadcasts radio messages written with
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  Speaker 1: their Enigma code. The British Army was able to crack
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  Speaker 1: the cipher, which helped the Allies win the war. With
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  Speaker 1: the history like that, it's no wonder this CIA has
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  Speaker 1: an entire team dedicated to cryptography, encryption, and code breaking,
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  Speaker 1: and this team is doing way more than talking in
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  Speaker 1: pig Latin. They're the world's foremost experts on how to
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  Speaker 1: speak in secret. Most of these cryptographers work at the
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  Speaker 1: CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and in one of the
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  Speaker 1: courtyards outside the main building there is something that sticks out,
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  Speaker 1: a twelve foot tall sculpture that's covered in seemingly random
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  Speaker 1: jumbles of letters. The sculpture is called cryptos, the Greek
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  Speaker 1: word for hidden. It was created by artist Jim Sanborn
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  Speaker 1: and installed in nineteen ninety. When you walk up to it,
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  Speaker 1: you see a huge vertical cylinder made out of petrified wood.
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  Speaker 1: Coming out of that cylinder, almost like paper coming out
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  Speaker 1: of a scroll, is a long, wavy slab of copper.
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  Speaker 1: The copper is divided into four sections, and each section
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  Speaker 1: has letters carved onto it. At first glance, it looks
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  Speaker 1: like gibberish, but each of those sections actually has an
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  Speaker 1: encrypted message inside of it. The first one is supposed
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  Speaker 1: to be the easiest to solve, and they get more
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  Speaker 1: difficult as you go. Now. For Jim Sanborn, the sculpture
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  Speaker 1: was supposed to be sort of a fun game He
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  Speaker 1: worked alongside a retired CIA employee named Ed Schitt, who
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  Speaker 1: created the ciphers used in each section, and together they
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  Speaker 1: gave the country's top code breakers a challenge solve them now.
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  Speaker 1: At first, CIA cryptographers left they figured this little game
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  Speaker 1: would be a piece of cake, but it wasn't. According
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  Speaker 1: to CIA records, it took almost three years for a
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  Speaker 1: group of analysts to solve the first three sections of cryptos.
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  Speaker 1: The first section was a confusing, somewhat poetic statement. It said,
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  Speaker 1: and I quotes between subtle shading and the absence of
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  Speaker 1: light lies the nuance of illusion. That last word illusion
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  Speaker 1: was slightly misspelled to make the code more difficult to break.
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  Speaker 1: Section two was a lot longer and even more confounded.
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  Speaker 1: It began with the words it was totally invisible, How's
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  Speaker 1: that possible? And it ended with the series of numbers
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  Speaker 1: that appeared to be geographical coordinates. The third section was
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  Speaker 1: also pretty long and definitely the most unsettling. It tells
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  Speaker 1: the story of someone climbing through a dark and narrow
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  Speaker 1: passage lit only by the flame of a single candle,
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  Speaker 1: then finding their way into a room. This section ended
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  Speaker 1: with the words can you see anything? And the answer
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  Speaker 1: to that is, well, not really. It's been thirty years
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  Speaker 1: since the experts cracked these three codes, but the fourth
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  Speaker 1: section of cryptos is still a mystery. Nobody, not to
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  Speaker 1: online sleuths, not computer coding experts, and not the country's
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  Speaker 1: top code breakers, has been able to figure it out.
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  Speaker 1: Jim Sanborn swears all four parts of cryptos are solvable,
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  Speaker 1: and that's when they're put together, they unlock the solution
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  Speaker 1: to a riddle. So the answer is there hidden inside
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  Speaker 1: the sculpture's strange twisting copper, just waiting to be revealed.
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  Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, archaeologists at the Tel Lahish site in
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  Speaker 1: central Israel found an object inscribed with a sentence, which
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  Speaker 1: not sound like a big deal, except the sentence was
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  Speaker 1: written using an alphabet and it was the oldest of
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  Speaker 1: its kind ever discovered. Five years later, experts were able
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  Speaker 1: to figure out exactly what it said. And we'll get there,
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  Speaker 1: but first it's important to understand how language emerges and
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  Speaker 1: why this discovery was so groundbreaking. We all know that
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  Speaker 1: one of the first things we learn as children is
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  Speaker 1: how to say our abs. The alphabet is the foundation
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  Speaker 1: of our language. But as far as human history goes
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  Speaker 1: it's actually a pretty recent invention. The first forms of
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  Speaker 1: writing emerged around three thy two hundred BCE, so a
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  Speaker 1: little over five thousand years ago. These writing systems were
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  Speaker 1: based on pictures like ancient Egyptian hybridglyphs or Mesopotamian kunea form.
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  Speaker 1: In these languages, a symbol usually stood for an entire
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  Speaker 1: word or an idea, and that meant that if you
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  Speaker 1: wanted to learn how to read and write, you needed
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  Speaker 1: to know hundreds of different symbols. If you struggled to
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  Speaker 1: sing your abcs as a kid, well, this would have
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  Speaker 1: been a whole lot tougher. Back then, reading and writing
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  Speaker 1: were very difficult skills to master. Although it's hard to
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  Speaker 1: say for sure, archaeologists and historians estimate that only between
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  Speaker 1: one and five percent of ancient Egyptians were literate. This
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  Speaker 1: meant writing and reading were reserved for the upper classes,
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  Speaker 1: and the archaeological writings that we have from this period
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  Speaker 1: are largely from royal communications, religious storytelling, or business. It's sad, honestly,
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  Speaker 1: because so much of history gets lost when people don't
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  Speaker 1: have the knowledge and the power to record it. So
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  Speaker 1: that's the far distant past. It would take over one
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  Speaker 1: thousand years for a phonetic alphabet like the one we
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  Speaker 1: used today to emerge. The first evidence of such a
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  Speaker 1: writing system comes from about one thy eight hundred BCE
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  Speaker 1: in the Canaan civilization. The Canaanites, if you don't know,
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  Speaker 1: were the indigenous peoples of the ancient Levant and Near East,
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  Speaker 1: which comprises modern day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts
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  Speaker 1: of Syria. Compared to hieroglyphics and canea form, the Canaanite
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  Speaker 1: alphabet had way fewer letters. It was a lot easier
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  Speaker 1: to read. We don't have great data about literacy rates
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  Speaker 1: among the Canaanites, but archaeologist's findings appear to suggest that
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  Speaker 1: more people were able to read and write using a
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  Speaker 1: phonetic alphabet than ever before, which is really a beautiful thing,
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  Speaker 1: and it brings me to that discovery I mentioned a
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  Speaker 1: minute ago. In twenty sixteen, archaeologists were digging at a
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  Speaker 1: site in central is Real, which was part of the
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  Speaker 1: Canan civilization around three thy eight hundred years ago. They
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  Speaker 1: found a small, off white rectangular object. It was about
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  Speaker 1: one inch tall and one and a quarter inches across.
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  Speaker 1: The top edge was fairly smooth and the bottom edge
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  Speaker 1: was jagged. Because of its size, shape, and color, archaeologists
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  Speaker 1: thought that it was bone. The object ended up in
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  Speaker 1: a storage locker for the next six years, which is
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  Speaker 1: really shocking when you figure out what it is exactly
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  Speaker 1: you see. In twenty twenty two, an archaeologist named Madeline
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  Speaker 1: Mumshuglow took the object out of storage and placed it
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  Speaker 1: under a microscope. It was the first time anyone had
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  Speaker 1: looked at it this closely, and right away she knew
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't just a random bone. It was a piece
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  Speaker 1: of an ivory tusk. Based on the jagged bottom edge,
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  Speaker 1: Madeline determined that the ivory had been carved into a comb.
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  Speaker 1: The edge was actually lined with teeth meant to untangle
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  Speaker 1: ancient human hair. But here's where the story gets really good.
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  Speaker 1: As she was examined the comb, Madeline noticed symbols carved
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  Speaker 1: into it. It was a message consisting of seventeen letters
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  Speaker 1: written in the Canaanite phonetic alphabet. It was the oldest
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  Speaker 1: sentence written in an alphabet that had ever been discovered.
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  Speaker 1: She and her team immediately sent the comb to a
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  Speaker 1: Canaanite expert. He was able to translate the ancient message,
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  Speaker 1: and it said, and I quote, may this tusk root
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  Speaker 1: out the lice of the hair and the beard. And
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  Speaker 1: there you go. It was simply a well wished to
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  Speaker 1: the comb's owner that they might be able to get
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  Speaker 1: the bugs out of their hair, which to me is amazing.
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  Speaker 1: It's so simple and so normal. It actually reveals something
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  Speaker 1: about the everyday lives of ancient people and makes them
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  Speaker 1: feel relatable in a brand new way. But still I
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  Speaker 1: can't help but wonder what they think if they knew
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  Speaker 1: we were messing around with the stuff that they used
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  Speaker 1: to keep in their bathroom. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curia. 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 Worldoflore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.