Combing Through History

One of the most curious things about humans is the ways in which we communicate. Today we'll explore two stories in that theme.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Like a lot of people, I had fun dabbling with
pig Latin when I was a kid. It was probably
my first foray into speaking in code. And even though
pig Latin isn't exactly the most secretive language out there,
it is part of what made me interested in cryptography now.
The word cryptography can be broken down into two parts,
crypt meaning hidden, and graphy meaning writing. The practice of

(00:59):
hiding mess by writing in code has been traced back
all the way to ancient Egypt, and cryptography has played
a role in major events throughout history. Take World War II,
for example, the German Army broadcasts radio messages written with
their Enigma code. The British Army was able to crack
the cipher, which helped the Allies win the war. With

(01:19):
the history like that, it's no wonder this CIA has
an entire team dedicated to cryptography, encryption, and code breaking,
and this team is doing way more than talking in
pig Latin. They're the world's foremost experts on how to
speak in secret. Most of these cryptographers work at the
CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and in one of the

(01:41):
courtyards outside the main building there is something that sticks out,
a twelve foot tall sculpture that's covered in seemingly random
jumbles of letters. The sculpture is called cryptos, the Greek
word for hidden. It was created by artist Jim Sanborn
and installed in nineteen ninety. When you walk up to it,
you see a huge vertical cylinder made out of petrified wood.

(02:02):
Coming out of that cylinder, almost like paper coming out
of a scroll, is a long, wavy slab of copper.
The copper is divided into four sections, and each section
has letters carved onto it. At first glance, it looks
like gibberish, but each of those sections actually has an
encrypted message inside of it. The first one is supposed

(02:22):
to be the easiest to solve, and they get more
difficult as you go. Now. For Jim Sanborn, the sculpture
was supposed to be sort of a fun game He
worked alongside a retired CIA employee named Ed Schitt, who
created the ciphers used in each section, and together they
gave the country's top code breakers a challenge solve them now.
At first, CIA cryptographers left they figured this little game

(02:45):
would be a piece of cake, but it wasn't. According
to CIA records, it took almost three years for a
group of analysts to solve the first three sections of cryptos.
The first section was a confusing, somewhat poetic statement. It said,
and I quotes between subtle shading and the absence of
light lies the nuance of illusion. That last word illusion

(03:07):
was slightly misspelled to make the code more difficult to break.
Section two was a lot longer and even more confounded.
It began with the words it was totally invisible, How's
that possible? And it ended with the series of numbers
that appeared to be geographical coordinates. The third section was
also pretty long and definitely the most unsettling. It tells

(03:29):
the story of someone climbing through a dark and narrow
passage lit only by the flame of a single candle,
then finding their way into a room. This section ended
with the words can you see anything? And the answer
to that is, well, not really. It's been thirty years
since the experts cracked these three codes, but the fourth
section of cryptos is still a mystery. Nobody, not to

(03:52):
online sleuths, not computer coding experts, and not the country's
top code breakers, has been able to figure it out.
Jim Sanborn swears all four parts of cryptos are solvable,
and that's when they're put together, they unlock the solution
to a riddle. So the answer is there hidden inside
the sculpture's strange twisting copper, just waiting to be revealed.

(04:30):
In twenty sixteen, archaeologists at the Tel Lahish site in
central Israel found an object inscribed with a sentence, which
not sound like a big deal, except the sentence was
written using an alphabet and it was the oldest of
its kind ever discovered. Five years later, experts were able
to figure out exactly what it said. And we'll get there,
but first it's important to understand how language emerges and

(04:53):
why this discovery was so groundbreaking. We all know that
one of the first things we learn as children is
how to say our abs. The alphabet is the foundation
of our language. But as far as human history goes
it's actually a pretty recent invention. The first forms of
writing emerged around three thy two hundred BCE, so a
little over five thousand years ago. These writing systems were

(05:16):
based on pictures like ancient Egyptian hybridglyphs or Mesopotamian kunea form.
In these languages, a symbol usually stood for an entire
word or an idea, and that meant that if you
wanted to learn how to read and write, you needed
to know hundreds of different symbols. If you struggled to
sing your abcs as a kid, well, this would have
been a whole lot tougher. Back then, reading and writing

(05:38):
were very difficult skills to master. Although it's hard to
say for sure, archaeologists and historians estimate that only between
one and five percent of ancient Egyptians were literate. This
meant writing and reading were reserved for the upper classes,
and the archaeological writings that we have from this period
are largely from royal communications, religious storytelling, or business. It's sad, honestly,

(06:02):
because so much of history gets lost when people don't
have the knowledge and the power to record it. So
that's the far distant past. It would take over one
thousand years for a phonetic alphabet like the one we
used today to emerge. The first evidence of such a
writing system comes from about one thy eight hundred BCE
in the Canaan civilization. The Canaanites, if you don't know,

(06:24):
were the indigenous peoples of the ancient Levant and Near East,
which comprises modern day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts
of Syria. Compared to hieroglyphics and canea form, the Canaanite
alphabet had way fewer letters. It was a lot easier
to read. We don't have great data about literacy rates
among the Canaanites, but archaeologist's findings appear to suggest that

(06:46):
more people were able to read and write using a
phonetic alphabet than ever before, which is really a beautiful thing,
and it brings me to that discovery I mentioned a
minute ago. In twenty sixteen, archaeologists were digging at a
site in central is Real, which was part of the
Canan civilization around three thy eight hundred years ago. They
found a small, off white rectangular object. It was about

(07:08):
one inch tall and one and a quarter inches across.
The top edge was fairly smooth and the bottom edge
was jagged. Because of its size, shape, and color, archaeologists
thought that it was bone. The object ended up in
a storage locker for the next six years, which is
really shocking when you figure out what it is exactly
you see. In twenty twenty two, an archaeologist named Madeline

(07:32):
Mumshuglow took the object out of storage and placed it
under a microscope. It was the first time anyone had
looked at it this closely, and right away she knew
it wasn't just a random bone. It was a piece
of an ivory tusk. Based on the jagged bottom edge,
Madeline determined that the ivory had been carved into a comb.
The edge was actually lined with teeth meant to untangle

(07:55):
ancient human hair. But here's where the story gets really good.
As she was examined the comb, Madeline noticed symbols carved
into it. It was a message consisting of seventeen letters
written in the Canaanite phonetic alphabet. It was the oldest
sentence written in an alphabet that had ever been discovered.
She and her team immediately sent the comb to a

(08:16):
Canaanite expert. He was able to translate the ancient message,
and it said, and I quote, may this tusk root
out the lice of the hair and the beard. And
there you go. It was simply a well wished to
the comb's owner that they might be able to get
the bugs out of their hair, which to me is amazing.
It's so simple and so normal. It actually reveals something

(08:38):
about the everyday lives of ancient people and makes them
feel relatable in a brand new way. But still I
can't help but wonder what they think if they knew
we were messing around with the stuff that they used
to keep in their bathroom. I hope you've enjoyed today's

(08:58):
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curia. Subscribe for free
on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all

(09:20):
about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.