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Short Stuff: What's the oldest book? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and there's Jerry again sitting in for producer
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Dave ce. Uh. And this is short stuff. As I've
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: already said, that's right, and we're talking about books. What
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: is a book? What isn't a book? That book in
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the window, the one with the waggony tail, That's right.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Do we get going? I thought we already had, but yes,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: let's keep going. So there's this book in in the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: National Museum of History in Bulgaria, and uh, it is
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  Speaker 1: what some people consider the oldest book in the world.
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  Speaker 1: Have you seen pictures of it. It's six pages of
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  Speaker 1: gold sheet, like the pages are gold and not like
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: they took paper and put gold around it or the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: edges are gilded. It is like a sheet of gold
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  Speaker 1: metal and there's six pages like that and they're bound together. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And it's written in a Truscan and uh. The Etruscans
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  Speaker 1: were the direct predecessors to the Romans. They kind of
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  Speaker 1: ran the area. I think that hey days around five
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: b C. And they're kind of this mysterious group because
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: we haven't deciphered their their writing yet, but we know
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  Speaker 1: that this is a is in a Truscan book, and
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  Speaker 1: so a lot of people say, there you have it, everybody.
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  Speaker 1: The oldest book in the world is called the gold
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  Speaker 1: Orphism Book, and this is it. Yes, it is actual,
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  Speaker 1: multiple pages, like you said, it is bound. There are illustrations.
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  Speaker 1: There's a mermaid and a harp and some soldiers and
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  Speaker 1: a horse rider. And you know that. They say this
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  Speaker 1: thing is years old. They found it along a river,
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  Speaker 1: the Strauma River in southwestern Bulgaria and a tomb. It
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: was donated. This is all kind of mysterious. It was
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  Speaker 1: donated by an anonymous person and then authenticated by two
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: anonymous scientists. Yeah, little sketchy. It sounds like aliens to me.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But the debate then started, well, that's not true. There's
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: always been debates about what is the oldest this, what's
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the oldest that, what's the oldest book? And if you
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: think about oldest book, it becomes a little bit of
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  Speaker 1: an esoteric question because you have to ask yourself what
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: is a book? Could it be a clay tablet or
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: a scroll, or you know, can it be something that
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: is an exit like doesn't tell a story, it's just
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: like accounting records. So you really have to sort of
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: define what a book is first. Yeah, So I mean
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of people would define a book by its
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  Speaker 1: physical attributes, right, Like it's a certain shape, Um, it's
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: bound together. That's a big one for a lot of people. Um.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Some people say it has to be on paper, which
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  Speaker 1: would um discount the gold Orphism book. Um. And then
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  Speaker 1: other people say, well, no, no, no, it's just got
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to like tell a story, say, and it can be
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: on anything and it doesn't have to be bound together.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And this is when everybody goes, oh boy, here we go.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Becomes another debate on what constitutes a book. Yeah, but
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  Speaker 1: it's not an angry debate, is it. No, it's not angry.
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  Speaker 1: But yet I'm angered by it because I think it's
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  Speaker 1: largely unnecessary. And there is a person cited in this
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  Speaker 1: House to Works article who I suspect purposefully obfuskates this
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  Speaker 1: and initiates this debate because they don't want this question
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: ever to be answered. Are you talking about Laurent Ferry m. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: This is a curator of rare books and manuscripts at
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  Speaker 1: Cornell and Cornell and they were actually interviewed for this
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  Speaker 1: House stuff Works article about eleven years ago and Cornell
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  Speaker 1: is in possession of these clay tablets that they maintain
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  Speaker 1: the largest in the world. And uh, they're pretty old.
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  Speaker 1: And some people might say, well, those are books, but
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: most of those, like I said about like tax records,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: their financial records, legal proceedings. Uh, they don't espouse any worldview,
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  Speaker 1: so I think they're in that means they are not books. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: Lauren Ferry says, a book would be something that has
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  Speaker 1: a binding and that espouses a worldview, right, So yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you can discount those um clay tablets there there. They
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  Speaker 1: just don't They don't count as a book, but to
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  Speaker 1: other people they would count as a book. So so
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: they said, well, okay, Lauren Ferry, what what is the
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  Speaker 1: oldest book then? And Fairy said, either Homer's Iliad or
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the Epic of Gilgamesh. The problem is, and this is
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: where I think Lauren Ferry is purposefully doing this just
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  Speaker 1: to keep this debate going because they like to talk
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  Speaker 1: about this kind of stuff. So the Epic of Gilgamesh
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  Speaker 1: the oldest is a very old book. Um, the British
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  Speaker 1: Museum has one, but it's written on clay tablets from
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  Speaker 1: the seventh century b C. And yeah, it's not bound.
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  Speaker 1: So the very example that this curator gave as the
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  Speaker 1: oldest book doesn't even fall within their own parameter. And
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  Speaker 1: here's where I started getting angry. All right, Well, let's
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  Speaker 1: take a break then for you hulk out and hulk smash,
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  Speaker 1: and we'll be right back to Well, we're not gonna
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: settle any debate, but we'll just talk about it more
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  Speaker 1: and make you more mad. All right, let's let's get
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: back to me getting mad. Well, it depends on who
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: you talk to. If you start bringing religion into it
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  Speaker 1: and all this stuff, then of course you're going to
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: have people that say you might have Christians that say, well,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: the Bible is clearly the oldest book because the world is,
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  Speaker 1: you know, only a few thousand years old, and the
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  Speaker 1: Bible was written right after that, so what's older than that?
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  Speaker 1: Bub and boobal scholars will say in scientists will say, actually,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the Bible has written over many, many hundreds of years,
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of these stories that were written were
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of years after the events that they're talking about, even, right,
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  Speaker 1: But they don't say that to the people who say
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  Speaker 1: the world's a few thousand years old and the Bible
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  Speaker 1: was written right after they the scholars turned to the
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  Speaker 1: rest of us and say, well, obviously these things were
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  Speaker 1: written over centuries after these events. So um, here's the thing.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: That's another thing that Lauren Ferry does is what about religion?
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  Speaker 1: Why would you bring that part into it? That's not fair.
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  Speaker 1: They're just trying to do this. And then there was
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  Speaker 1: another one too that they said too, is well, you know,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: some books are not It's not like the stories were
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  Speaker 1: created out of whole cloth right when the books are written,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of them are based on oral traditions. And
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  Speaker 1: these oral traditions far predate any of the books that
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: are these oldest books that are written. And it does
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  Speaker 1: not matter. It does not matter if the book is
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  Speaker 1: a brand new story, but it's still older than any
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  Speaker 1: other book than a book that was published in the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: fifties based on an oral tradition from five thousand years ago.
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  Speaker 1: That older book is going to be the older book.
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  Speaker 1: This Lauren Ferry person is really getting under my skin. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it can't be a book. Isn't a story. A book
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  Speaker 1: is a story that has been bound and written, And
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I'm you know what, I'm in my definition, it doesn't
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  Speaker 1: have to be bound. If you'd give me a scroll
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  Speaker 1: that's got a that's got a good beginning, middle, and
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  Speaker 1: end to it, then that's a book. So there's papyri
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that are years old that would that would qualify them,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: because I mean, it's a book, but it's just one
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  Speaker 1: long page, all right, that's a book. Okay, alright to me.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: So we're hot on the trail here, at least as
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: far as what you consider a book. I mean, Caroac
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: wrote on rolls of toilet paper, right, he wrote on
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: was the roles of toilet paper. I know it was
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  Speaker 1: a very long roll of paper over like forty eight
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  Speaker 1: or seventy two hours or something like that, and like
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  Speaker 1: that was the story in the book. But you can't
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: sell stuff like that, so you have to bind them
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  Speaker 1: in the traditional form so you can put them on
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  Speaker 1: yourself exactly. But yet, was it not a book before
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: when it was just on one long scroll. It's a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: really great point. Now I'm just getting mad at us, No,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: not us, fairy Fairy Lauren Faery, be mad at them.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: All right. There's another question is what constitutes a book?
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  Speaker 1: What kind of book are you talking about if you're
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  Speaker 1: talking about a printed book in the in the understanding
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  Speaker 1: of printing that we have here in the modern world. Well,
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  Speaker 1: then that's easy to settle the Gutenberg Bible or the
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  Speaker 1: book printed right before the Gutenberg Bible. Man, I wish
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  Speaker 1: I would have looked it up. I just I forgot
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  Speaker 1: about it the whole episode on I know, but whatever
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  Speaker 1: book Guttenberg put out first, that would that would qualify.
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  Speaker 1: But then you remember in that episode we talked about
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  Speaker 1: China had printers that they didn't use um movable type.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: They used woodblock printing, but they were still printing book books,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: so you know, okay, but then other people say, well
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  Speaker 1: before printing, before automatic printing, there was handwriting, but they
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  Speaker 1: were still writing books. Okay. Well then now you're talking
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: about manuscripts. So so actually you come back to the
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  Speaker 1: Biblical people and say, well what you got and they say, well,
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  Speaker 1: we have manuscripts that were written in the fourth century.
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  Speaker 1: That's pretty old, isn't it. And you say, yeah, that's
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  Speaker 1: pretty old. But is it is is it any more
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  Speaker 1: of a book than the gold Orphism Book? Right? I
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: don't even know where we are now in this debate,
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  Speaker 1: to be honest, because I I think I'm becking myself
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  Speaker 1: into a corner that I painted myself into. You can
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: just walk right out of it, just say this is
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  Speaker 1: what I now think. I think it can be handwritten, okay,
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  Speaker 1: because Jack Carowack was writing with his hand. I think
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  Speaker 1: it can be on a scroll. I can't be an
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  Speaker 1: oral story. Okay. Agree, I'm gonna say it doesn't have
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  Speaker 1: to be bound. If you want to out, it might
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: have to be bound. But then you're getting into consumerism
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  Speaker 1: and like, you know that whole argument. But I think
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  Speaker 1: it has to be connected in some way. So like
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  Speaker 1: if it's one long scroll, those pages are still connected. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so what are you are you saying? If they slice
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  Speaker 1: that scroll up into a hundred sheets and just stacked them,
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  Speaker 1: that's not a book because there's a truscan um gold
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  Speaker 1: sheets that are not connected, that that would not really
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  Speaker 1: qualify as a book like the gold Orphism book that
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: are actually older than the gold Orphism book. But they
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: wouldn't count their just pages. You got pages, not a book.
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  Speaker 1: Pages are part of a book, all right. I guess
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: it's here point I should reveal to the world that
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I am Laurence Ferry. Oh my gosh, he just ripped
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: off his mask and first he was bob Yucker and
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: then he was Laurence Ferry. Bob, what is that from?
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I think that was where those Budlight or the Miller commercials, right,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I thought it was like a cricket gun or something.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Go back and watch some of this sometime on YouTube.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Those are fantastic. Yeah they really It was Millard, wasn't it. Yeah?
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Miller had great bits of nostalgia. Wow, we were raised
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: on TV, weren't we? Dang straight? Well, I'll tell you
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: who was raised on books, Laurence Ferry, and you know
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: who was raised on radio? Journey And how could you
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: get any better as far as endings go than that chunk? Agreed? Well, everybody, short,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: stuff is apt. Stuff you should know is a production
• 11:37
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