April 22, 2013 • 22 mins
In 1725, Beringer was the University of Würzburg's chair of natural history and chief physician to the prince bishop. He was also unpopular, and some of his colleagues sought to discredit him. There are two versions of the story -- but which is true?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
My name is Holly Fry and I am Tracy V. Wilson,
(00:21):
and today we're going to talk a little bit about
early fossil study. When when we started on this podcast,
I was very sad that previous hosts had already talked
about the bone Wars. So I am glad that you
found a different, crazy fossil story for us to talk about.
It is it's one of those things that's often told
(00:41):
in um archaeology studies as sort of a cautionary tale
to some degree, but it's kind of a fascinating little story,
and the tale that's often told is not really completely accurate.
So what we're talking about today is Johann Bringer and
he was born Johann Bartolomas Adam Bringer in sixteen sixty seven.
(01:04):
He was the son of a professor Johann Ludwig Berenger,
and Berenger was an active scholar. He eventually became the
chair of natural History at the University of Wurtzburg, and
he was also chief physician to the Prince Bishop of
Wurtzburg and the Prince Bishop's patronage enabled Berenger to study
a hobby subject, which was fossils. But unfortunately Beinger was
(01:28):
by most accounts rather arrogant and conceded, which kind of
led to the events that ended up unfolding. Right, So,
there were several theories about the origins of fossils at
the time. There was the spermatic principle, and that was
that the results of marine animals mating could escape into
the sea and sometimes evaporate into the atmosphere, fall down
(01:52):
his rain, and grow new fish in the rock crevices
where the fertilized eggs fell, which is delightful. Yes. So
the theory there is that the fish examples that you
would find in fossils were actual fish that had grown
in the rock because they had fallen from the sky
as fertilized eggs. There's the helio memory theory, which is
(02:13):
that raised from the sun could sort of leave a
photo imprint onto stones of the things that the light
had already touched, which is also delightful. It is, and
it makes me think of photography a little bit in
some ways. It's kind of a fascinating theory to be
rolling around in the early seventeen hundreds, right, the sun
was painting pictures on things. So the next was the
(02:34):
plastic theory, and that's similar to the spermatic theory, but
with the fossils spontaneously growing inside of rocks. People had
that same theory about other animals, like living animals too. Yeah,
it was that that was used to confuse me. Generation
was popular as a as a concept, so goose neck
clams were spawning geese in people's minds at sign So
(02:59):
then there's this signature of God, which was Baringer's favorite,
and it is mine too, because I want to call
it the slart of our fast theory if you have
ever read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and that's
that God carved out the images of animals and plants
into the rocks when he was making the earth. And
Berenger believed that fossils were quote stones of a peculiar sort,
(03:20):
hidden by the author of nature for his own pleasure,
i e. They were made by a higher power, often
just out of a sense of delight, rather than occurring
via these other principles that were in discussion at the time.
And so to set that up, uh, that kind of
sets up our story, which is, as we said, there
are two versions, so we're going to start with the
(03:41):
first version, which is kind of the legendary version. And
according to this version, again, he Berenger was a professor
at the time, and on Many thirty one of sevent
two or sometimes three, depending on the source, students brought
him fossil samples UM And there were three samples. One
had a three dimensional image of the sun and two
(04:03):
had worms or worm like markings on them, but they
were raised up. They weren't embedded inside the rock. They
were on top of it, like extruded. So he was
immediately excited and puzzled by these stones UM. And between
the first delivery at the end of May and November
of seventy five, more sample fossils followed. Yes, the students
(04:25):
kept bringing him samples, and these contained all kinds of
different images, including heavenly objects like comets with tails and moons,
and then even things like Hebraic letters. Uh. There were plants,
there were insects, there were small animals. Things that we
would probably recognize pretty quickly couldn't happen because a lot
(04:45):
of them involved soft tissue that would normally be broken
down in a fossil situation. But Berenger was just super
excited by all of these discoveries, right, and we as
we've talked about before, he was pretty arrogant and had
a high opinion of his own knowledge. So this is
sort of a pride go with before the Fall kind
of situation. Yes. So he allegedly received somewhere around two
(05:09):
thousand of these stones, which he thought were legitimate things. Yeah,
So he after studying them over the course of several
months as they were coming in, he said about writing
what he believed would be a masterpiece in lithography studies,
which lithography is what fossils were called at the time,
not the modern meaning, uh, And his seventeen twenty six book,
The Wurtzburg Lithography was this masterpiece which he thought was
(05:32):
going to be kind of his own scientific opus. And
the book features illustrations of the stones and it discusses
their possible origins, including the theories that we mentioned at
the beginning of the podcast. While he was working on
the book, rumors started to circulate that the stones that
he had were fake contribute created by contemporary hoaxters with
(05:53):
the goal of seriously embarrassing him because he was pompous
and pretentious. And in his book, because these rumors did
start to circulate before it was complete, he actually includes
an entire chapter about the hoax rumors. Uh, And I'm
going to read a passage from it. It's a little
bit lengthy, but stick with us. Uh, he says. Quote. Then,
when I had all but completed my work, I caught
(06:16):
the rumor circulating throughout the city, especially among prominent and
learned men, that every one of these stones, which on
the advice of wise men I proposed to expound in
a published treatise, were quote recently sculpted by hand, made
to look as though at different periods they had been
resurrected from a very old burial, and sold to me
as one indifferent to fraud and caught up in the
(06:38):
blind greed of curiosity. Further, that I, once deceived, in
my wretched turn, was deluding the world and trying to
sell new hoaxes as genuine antiques to the silent laughter
of prudent souls. I was shocked beyond words to learn
that the authors of this atrocious calumny were two men,
perhaps best described as a pair of antagonists whose names
(06:58):
I have reason to protect at present, men with whom
I was closely associated in numerous functions, former colleagues in
the academic society. He went on in this whole chapter
about the hoax rumors to say, our idiomorphic stones are
not the handwrought products of recent artistry, as some persons
have shamelessly pretended and attempted to pedal to the public
(07:20):
by widespread rumor and gossip. So the two men he
keeps referring to but not naming are a geographer ja
Ignatz Roderick, who was a professor of geography, algebra and
analysis at the University of Wurzburg, and a historian George
van Eckhard, who was Privy Counselor and librarian to the
(07:40):
court and the University. Uh. But the hoax rumors, of course,
were indeed true. So he became so embarrassed, according to
the legend, when he found a stone that had his
name carved on it, just as the book was rolling
off the presses and into the hands of the public.
And he was alledg to le so chagrined at this,
(08:02):
and it, having having been pranked by students, that he
tried to buy up every copy of the book in
existence and bankrupted himself and died soon after the ordeal
in misery and destitution. So that's the sort of legendary
version of the story. Yes, that's the extremely cautionary tale
of a fossil hoax, and the real story does have
some seeds of truth in that version, but there are
(08:24):
some wide swings into the realm of falsehood as well.
The dates for the stones being presented to Barringer and
the publication of his book R and D correct, but
the mock nations of the hoax and the manner in
which it was revealed and what happened post discovery are
quite different, and the real story was actually revealed in
court documents and transcripts that were found in the Votzburg
(08:46):
State Archives. Dr Heinrich Kirchner is recognized as the person
who discovered these items in although Melvin E. Yawn and
Daniel J. Wolfe, who produced the Annate did and translated
work of Berenger's book, are the people that are cited
with doing so. More often, Yawn and wolf themselves cite
(09:08):
Kirshner's work and the story that's told in the transcripts
is really one of academic envy. It's kind of just
a drama that's playing out among colleagues that are just
kind of have vendetta's against one another and have a
jealousy at the heart of their relationship. Uh. Berenger did
take students with him to dig for fossils, and there
(09:29):
were three in particular that were involved in this particular episode.
One was seventeen year old Christian Zonger and two brothers,
Nicholas who was eighteen and Valentine who was fourteen Hayne.
It turns out that the prank was not something that
they thought of themselves. It was a plan on the
parts of Jay Ignatz, Roderick, and George vont Eckhart to
(09:52):
use Berenger's own obstinates against him. Roderick and Eckhart had
apparently hired zong to polish stones for them that Roderick
had carved and sort of aged them a little bit,
and then Zonga would plant them in dig sites, but
some were also handed off to a stone cutter's assistant
to sell to Baringer as though he had accidentally found
(10:15):
them at sites, or as though he had come into
possession of them. Kind of to support the idea that
it was natural by having these things come from multiple
sources instead of one stream of supply, which might look suspicious. Right.
And part of the reason that he was convinced that
these fossil samples were the work of God was the
inclusion on some of the stones of language that put
(10:37):
them outside the natural imprint theory. Right. While animals and
plants happen in nature, letters don't. So that's part of
why Bringer, who was already a little predisposed to think
that these were divine creations, that just supported that theory
as far as he was concerned, rather than dismissing the
(10:57):
validity of the fossils as some people might have a
roached them right, So, because the samples substantiated his theories
of fossils, of where fossils came from, as cognitive bias
kind of led him down the path of words mean
they're real instead of words mean they're fake. Yea, So
he fell right into the trap set by his fellow academics,
and as Berenger sample set grew and he started working
(11:20):
on his book in earnest Roderick and Eckar apparently began
circulating the hoax rumor, because they were afraid that if
Berenger published the work without the hoax being revealed, they
could somehow be connected to the findings and would be
ruined along with their colleague. They were starting to think
that if he went ahead and published it, the entire
university would kind of be embarrassed, and they would be embarrassed,
(11:43):
and whether or not they were implicated as hoaxters, it
could be just a really bad scene. So they didn't
want him to publish the book. Now it was partially
covering their own behind At this point. There's some dispute
as to how he was finally convinced that this was
a hope. It is possible that he found a rock
with his name on it, but no such rock has
(12:04):
ever been recovered, and some accounts suggests that Roderick and
Eckhart had finally thought that things had gone too far
and that they outright told Berenger that the stones were fakes,
but he wouldn't believe their confession because he was so
convinced at that point. There's also a theory that the
church bishop was involved in convincing him of the truth.
(12:24):
This is a part of the story that hasn't ever
really been clear, and it's not referenced in the court
proceedings that we have to document it. Uh. And after
the fraud was exposed though, however, he was convinced, Berenger
took action, and on April thirteenth of seventeen twenty six,
there was a hearing at the Votzburg Cathedral chapter accusing
Roderick and Eckhart of trying to doup Berenger. So unlike
(12:47):
the legend story where he just is ashamed and tries
to hide the whole thing, he actually is pretty open
about trying to pursue his hoaxters and bring them to justice.
Municipal trials followed all this on April fifteenth and June
eleventh of seventy six. UH. The young diggers that were
involved were questioned about their involvement, and if you read
(13:09):
the Yn and Wolf translation and annotation of Barranger's book,
the hearings are included in the appendices, and all of
the specific questions that they asked the kids are in there,
which we won't go through because it really is kind
of a long arduous Have you ever carved a thing?
Do you know how to Carve. I mean, they're really
specific questions and they go on for quite a while,
(13:30):
but the trial papers begin and end rather abruptly. We've
talked about other trials on the podcast, and there's often
like we get the opening arguments and the discussion and
the lead in this kind of just starts with questions
to the kids and ends after the June eleventh trial,
which was also questions. It doesn't really get to what
(13:50):
happened like in deliberation and discussion. Uh, it just kind
of includes the questions and the answers. Roderick tried to
shift the blame to the boys Barringer had hired to
help him with his digs, and the Haynes really appeared
to be innocent in the whole thing. There was apparently
a bribe that was offered to Zanger also to blame
(14:10):
the hang the Hayne brothers, but Zanger refused to take it. Yeah,
so it pretty quickly became a parent that Roderick and
Eckhart were in fact guilty, and they were disgraced when
that became obvious. So the very thing they had hoped
to avoid by pointing out the hoax and starting the
hoax rumors came to fruition in their trial. So Zonger
(14:31):
was implicated, but it doesn't appear that any real punishment
came to him because he didn't know that they were
faking these stones. But he did ask the Commission for
assistance in collecting eight days worth of wages that Roderick
owed him for polishing stones, which I just thought was
sort of funny. But in the midst of all of this,
he's like, yeah, they were faking, and he still owes
(14:51):
me money for this fraud. I loved it. So what
was the motivation for all of this? It's that the
antagonists wanted to rule and Berenger because quote, he was
so arrogant and despised them all. Yeah, it was just
as simple as that. I have seen some kind of
less um dependable sources that suggested that there may or
(15:13):
may not have been a love affair involved between Um
one of the other academics, and someone that was connected
to Berenger, but I never had any verification of that.
It really does in most articles and discussions of it
kind of come down to you. They just thought he
was an arrogant jerk, right, and they just wanted to
(15:33):
put him in his place. Let's show that jerk face
with our fake fossils. Yeah. And while tales of Barringer's
shame and demise completely colored the apocryphal story, as you said,
it's kind of a cautionary tale of like, you know,
don't fall for things that you just want to believe,
because you'll end up poor and embarrassed and and die
and early death because of your shame. He actually emerged
(15:56):
from the hoax ordeal pretty well in his time, and
he went on to write two more books that were
not about fossils. Uh. So he really came out pretty
well in the whole deal. So. Eckhart, on the other hand,
died four years after the trial, and he had actually
been working on a history of the Duchy of Votzberg
for many years, but after this all happened, he was
denied access to the library archives. Uh, and he never
(16:19):
got to finish that work. Roderick left Wurtzburg in shame.
Berenger died in seventeen forty, which was fourteen years after
the hoax trial. And even though the remainder of his
life seems to have gone pretty well, he has not
been treated terribly well by history. He's become kind of
a symbol of gullibility and um the foolishness of cognitive bias.
(16:41):
In seventeen sixty seven, which was twenty seven years after
his death and forty one years after the original publication
and trial, bereng Jer's Wurtzburg Lithography was republished and forty
four hundred thirty four of Berenger stones, which came to
be known as Yugensteina, which literally really means live stones
(17:01):
or lying stones, actually survive. There were four d and
ninety four depicted in the book, UH, and many of
the collection that remains are at the University Museum at Oxford.
Berenger claimed that he had received more than two thousand,
but it's possible that that's a bit of an inflated number,
so UH, you can go visit some of these stones.
(17:22):
Some of them are apparently in the hands of private
collectors as well, because they are still significant in their
in antiquity and continue to be a cautionary tale. Even
though if he did not die in shame immediately after,
he went after the people that tried to make a
fool of him, which I kind of love about the story.
Don't be a jerk or fall prey to your own
(17:44):
humorist is the moral of this story. Yeah. So that
is the story of Johann Berenger's Lying Stones, which I
sort of just love. It's one of the stories that
we wish there were even more records. There are no
like portraits of him, for example, but I still just
love that it's studied and examined. And Uh, as we've said,
(18:04):
it's become almost like a fairy tale told to archaeology
students on how not to be duped. I believe you
have some listener mail my maw. Indeed. Uh, this actually
came to us on Facebook and it was in relation
to a listener mail I had read about Caesar's horse
(18:24):
possibly having toes instead of hooves. Uh. And this is
from our listener Adam. And he says, Hi, there a
long time listener, first time writer, YadA, YadA, but high
and he said, my listener mail about Caesar's horse comes
from Stonius is the Twelve Caesars. Here's the quote in
full quote. He wrote, A remarkable horse too, with feet
that were almost human, for its hoofs were cloven in
(18:45):
such a way as to look like toes. The horse
was fold on his own place, and since the soothsayers
had declared that it foretold the rule of the world,
for its master, he reared it with the greatest care,
and was the first to mount it, for it would
endure no other rider. After words, too, he dedicated a
statue of it before the Temple of Venus Genetrics, which
I hope I pronounced correctly. Uh this was published, Adam
(19:08):
goes on to say, in about a d so far
before the fourteenth century day your listener was able to
trace it back to the problem with using Suetonius as
a historical source is that he does not judge the
validity of many of the statements that he includes in
his histories, although he sometimes does put in his own
two cents. Instead, he reports what others have said. Often
this means that he is reporting a source that we
(19:29):
have either lost the original source or we have no
idea where he got it from. In the Twelve Caesars,
you get many folk tales, competing versions of events, and
mystical explanations. What you get is a popular history and
a great story for those of us who studied history.
We must remember that this was before any true historical
theory had been established, so there's no filter. What it
does show us is how people who lived at the
(19:51):
time understood their own history, and it can also be
used to confirm or support other versions that can be
found elsewhere. Thanks so much, Adam, that's so cool. We
also have a listener Jim on Twitter that mentioned it. Yes. Uh,
he pretty much pointed us to the source, and then
I went looking on the internet and found that you can,
because it's so old, get that entire book on the
internet to read the whole thing if you want to. Yeah,
(20:12):
it was part of Project Gutenberg, and I think in
my reply to Adam on our page if Anybody happens
Secia is the link to the Project Gutenberg too, So yeah,
it's kind of a cool thing. There is. There are
many sources of having the possible vestigil chose that we've
talked about before. Yeah, And and the thought at first
(20:34):
that that was what people were talking about, And then
there was some discussion about whether the hoops had actually
been cloven by a person to make them look like toes,
so that it was like a human modification of course,
which sounds terrible and painful to me, rather than sort
of a naturally occurring and atavism in the horse's feet. Yes,
(20:56):
but as we know, horses did have a digil toes
and sometimes they still love the bones that's that are
part of that mechanism that are just above the hoof apparently. Yes,
fascinating stuff the way animals evolved. Uh so, yeah, we
love that letter. It was super cool. Adam is uh
very knowledgeable about the twelve Caesars and it's really fun
(21:18):
to talk to you about it. I love all the
analysis of where the twelve Caesars fits in to sort
of understand history. Yeah, awesome, I love it. So if
you would like to write us with your insights and
knowledge of history, you can do so at History Podcast
at Discovery dot com. You can also connect with us
on Facebook like Adam did, which is Facebook dot com,
(21:38):
slash history class stuff, or on Twitter like Jim did
at missed in History. We're also on tumbler at missed
in History dot tumbler dot com, and we're on Pinterest.
And if you would like to learn more about the
subject we talked about today, you can go to our
website and type in the words lying stones and you
will turn up a new article called ten famous vac
Antiques and the suckers who bought them, Although not all
(22:00):
those people are shuckers, a lot of them fooled experts.
So it's an interesting read on ways that other people
have been hoaxed by fake items. And if you would
like to learn about almost anything else you can think of,
you can do that at our website as well. And
that website is how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it how
(22:22):
stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff You Missed
in History Class is brought to you by Audible
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
My name is Holly Fry and I am Tracy V. Wilson,
(00:21):
and today we're going to talk a little bit about
early fossil study. When when we started on this podcast,
I was very sad that previous hosts had already talked
about the bone Wars. So I am glad that you
found a different, crazy fossil story for us to talk about.
It is it's one of those things that's often told
(00:41):
in um archaeology studies as sort of a cautionary tale
to some degree, but it's kind of a fascinating little story,
and the tale that's often told is not really completely accurate.
So what we're talking about today is Johann Bringer and
he was born Johann Bartolomas Adam Bringer in sixteen sixty seven.
(01:04):
He was the son of a professor Johann Ludwig Berenger,
and Berenger was an active scholar. He eventually became the
chair of natural History at the University of Wurtzburg, and
he was also chief physician to the Prince Bishop of
Wurtzburg and the Prince Bishop's patronage enabled Berenger to study
a hobby subject, which was fossils. But unfortunately Beinger was
(01:28):
by most accounts rather arrogant and conceded, which kind of
led to the events that ended up unfolding. Right, So,
there were several theories about the origins of fossils at
the time. There was the spermatic principle, and that was
that the results of marine animals mating could escape into
the sea and sometimes evaporate into the atmosphere, fall down
(01:52):
his rain, and grow new fish in the rock crevices
where the fertilized eggs fell, which is delightful. Yes. So
the theory there is that the fish examples that you
would find in fossils were actual fish that had grown
in the rock because they had fallen from the sky
as fertilized eggs. There's the helio memory theory, which is
(02:13):
that raised from the sun could sort of leave a
photo imprint onto stones of the things that the light
had already touched, which is also delightful. It is, and
it makes me think of photography a little bit in
some ways. It's kind of a fascinating theory to be
rolling around in the early seventeen hundreds, right, the sun
was painting pictures on things. So the next was the
(02:34):
plastic theory, and that's similar to the spermatic theory, but
with the fossils spontaneously growing inside of rocks. People had
that same theory about other animals, like living animals too. Yeah,
it was that that was used to confuse me. Generation
was popular as a as a concept, so goose neck
clams were spawning geese in people's minds at sign So
(02:59):
then there's this signature of God, which was Baringer's favorite,
and it is mine too, because I want to call
it the slart of our fast theory if you have
ever read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and that's
that God carved out the images of animals and plants
into the rocks when he was making the earth. And
Berenger believed that fossils were quote stones of a peculiar sort,
(03:20):
hidden by the author of nature for his own pleasure,
i e. They were made by a higher power, often
just out of a sense of delight, rather than occurring
via these other principles that were in discussion at the time.
And so to set that up, uh, that kind of
sets up our story, which is, as we said, there
are two versions, so we're going to start with the
(03:41):
first version, which is kind of the legendary version. And
according to this version, again, he Berenger was a professor
at the time, and on Many thirty one of sevent
two or sometimes three, depending on the source, students brought
him fossil samples UM And there were three samples. One
had a three dimensional image of the sun and two
(04:03):
had worms or worm like markings on them, but they
were raised up. They weren't embedded inside the rock. They
were on top of it, like extruded. So he was
immediately excited and puzzled by these stones UM. And between
the first delivery at the end of May and November
of seventy five, more sample fossils followed. Yes, the students
(04:25):
kept bringing him samples, and these contained all kinds of
different images, including heavenly objects like comets with tails and moons,
and then even things like Hebraic letters. Uh. There were plants,
there were insects, there were small animals. Things that we
would probably recognize pretty quickly couldn't happen because a lot
(04:45):
of them involved soft tissue that would normally be broken
down in a fossil situation. But Berenger was just super
excited by all of these discoveries, right, and we as
we've talked about before, he was pretty arrogant and had
a high opinion of his own knowledge. So this is
sort of a pride go with before the Fall kind
of situation. Yes. So he allegedly received somewhere around two
(05:09):
thousand of these stones, which he thought were legitimate things. Yeah,
So he after studying them over the course of several
months as they were coming in, he said about writing
what he believed would be a masterpiece in lithography studies,
which lithography is what fossils were called at the time,
not the modern meaning, uh, And his seventeen twenty six book,
The Wurtzburg Lithography was this masterpiece which he thought was
(05:32):
going to be kind of his own scientific opus. And
the book features illustrations of the stones and it discusses
their possible origins, including the theories that we mentioned at
the beginning of the podcast. While he was working on
the book, rumors started to circulate that the stones that
he had were fake contribute created by contemporary hoaxters with
(05:53):
the goal of seriously embarrassing him because he was pompous
and pretentious. And in his book, because these rumors did
start to circulate before it was complete, he actually includes
an entire chapter about the hoax rumors. Uh, And I'm
going to read a passage from it. It's a little
bit lengthy, but stick with us. Uh, he says. Quote. Then,
when I had all but completed my work, I caught
(06:16):
the rumor circulating throughout the city, especially among prominent and
learned men, that every one of these stones, which on
the advice of wise men I proposed to expound in
a published treatise, were quote recently sculpted by hand, made
to look as though at different periods they had been
resurrected from a very old burial, and sold to me
as one indifferent to fraud and caught up in the
(06:38):
blind greed of curiosity. Further, that I, once deceived, in
my wretched turn, was deluding the world and trying to
sell new hoaxes as genuine antiques to the silent laughter
of prudent souls. I was shocked beyond words to learn
that the authors of this atrocious calumny were two men,
perhaps best described as a pair of antagonists whose names
(06:58):
I have reason to protect at present, men with whom
I was closely associated in numerous functions, former colleagues in
the academic society. He went on in this whole chapter
about the hoax rumors to say, our idiomorphic stones are
not the handwrought products of recent artistry, as some persons
have shamelessly pretended and attempted to pedal to the public
(07:20):
by widespread rumor and gossip. So the two men he
keeps referring to but not naming are a geographer ja
Ignatz Roderick, who was a professor of geography, algebra and
analysis at the University of Wurzburg, and a historian George
van Eckhard, who was Privy Counselor and librarian to the
(07:40):
court and the University. Uh. But the hoax rumors, of course,
were indeed true. So he became so embarrassed, according to
the legend, when he found a stone that had his
name carved on it, just as the book was rolling
off the presses and into the hands of the public.
And he was alledg to le so chagrined at this,
(08:02):
and it, having having been pranked by students, that he
tried to buy up every copy of the book in
existence and bankrupted himself and died soon after the ordeal
in misery and destitution. So that's the sort of legendary
version of the story. Yes, that's the extremely cautionary tale
of a fossil hoax, and the real story does have
some seeds of truth in that version, but there are
(08:24):
some wide swings into the realm of falsehood as well.
The dates for the stones being presented to Barringer and
the publication of his book R and D correct, but
the mock nations of the hoax and the manner in
which it was revealed and what happened post discovery are
quite different, and the real story was actually revealed in
court documents and transcripts that were found in the Votzburg
(08:46):
State Archives. Dr Heinrich Kirchner is recognized as the person
who discovered these items in although Melvin E. Yawn and
Daniel J. Wolfe, who produced the Annate did and translated
work of Berenger's book, are the people that are cited
with doing so. More often, Yawn and wolf themselves cite
(09:08):
Kirshner's work and the story that's told in the transcripts
is really one of academic envy. It's kind of just
a drama that's playing out among colleagues that are just
kind of have vendetta's against one another and have a
jealousy at the heart of their relationship. Uh. Berenger did
take students with him to dig for fossils, and there
(09:29):
were three in particular that were involved in this particular episode.
One was seventeen year old Christian Zonger and two brothers,
Nicholas who was eighteen and Valentine who was fourteen Hayne.
It turns out that the prank was not something that
they thought of themselves. It was a plan on the
parts of Jay Ignatz, Roderick, and George vont Eckhart to
(09:52):
use Berenger's own obstinates against him. Roderick and Eckhart had
apparently hired zong to polish stones for them that Roderick
had carved and sort of aged them a little bit,
and then Zonga would plant them in dig sites, but
some were also handed off to a stone cutter's assistant
to sell to Baringer as though he had accidentally found
(10:15):
them at sites, or as though he had come into
possession of them. Kind of to support the idea that
it was natural by having these things come from multiple
sources instead of one stream of supply, which might look suspicious. Right.
And part of the reason that he was convinced that
these fossil samples were the work of God was the
inclusion on some of the stones of language that put
(10:37):
them outside the natural imprint theory. Right. While animals and
plants happen in nature, letters don't. So that's part of
why Bringer, who was already a little predisposed to think
that these were divine creations, that just supported that theory
as far as he was concerned, rather than dismissing the
(10:57):
validity of the fossils as some people might have a
roached them right, So, because the samples substantiated his theories
of fossils, of where fossils came from, as cognitive bias
kind of led him down the path of words mean
they're real instead of words mean they're fake. Yea, So
he fell right into the trap set by his fellow academics,
and as Berenger sample set grew and he started working
(11:20):
on his book in earnest Roderick and Eckar apparently began
circulating the hoax rumor, because they were afraid that if
Berenger published the work without the hoax being revealed, they
could somehow be connected to the findings and would be
ruined along with their colleague. They were starting to think
that if he went ahead and published it, the entire
university would kind of be embarrassed, and they would be embarrassed,
(11:43):
and whether or not they were implicated as hoaxters, it
could be just a really bad scene. So they didn't
want him to publish the book. Now it was partially
covering their own behind At this point. There's some dispute
as to how he was finally convinced that this was
a hope. It is possible that he found a rock
with his name on it, but no such rock has
(12:04):
ever been recovered, and some accounts suggests that Roderick and
Eckhart had finally thought that things had gone too far
and that they outright told Berenger that the stones were fakes,
but he wouldn't believe their confession because he was so
convinced at that point. There's also a theory that the
church bishop was involved in convincing him of the truth.
(12:24):
This is a part of the story that hasn't ever
really been clear, and it's not referenced in the court
proceedings that we have to document it. Uh. And after
the fraud was exposed though, however, he was convinced, Berenger
took action, and on April thirteenth of seventeen twenty six,
there was a hearing at the Votzburg Cathedral chapter accusing
Roderick and Eckhart of trying to doup Berenger. So unlike
(12:47):
the legend story where he just is ashamed and tries
to hide the whole thing, he actually is pretty open
about trying to pursue his hoaxters and bring them to justice.
Municipal trials followed all this on April fifteenth and June
eleventh of seventy six. UH. The young diggers that were
involved were questioned about their involvement, and if you read
(13:09):
the Yn and Wolf translation and annotation of Barranger's book,
the hearings are included in the appendices, and all of
the specific questions that they asked the kids are in there,
which we won't go through because it really is kind
of a long arduous Have you ever carved a thing?
Do you know how to Carve. I mean, they're really
specific questions and they go on for quite a while,
(13:30):
but the trial papers begin and end rather abruptly. We've
talked about other trials on the podcast, and there's often
like we get the opening arguments and the discussion and
the lead in this kind of just starts with questions
to the kids and ends after the June eleventh trial,
which was also questions. It doesn't really get to what
(13:50):
happened like in deliberation and discussion. Uh, it just kind
of includes the questions and the answers. Roderick tried to
shift the blame to the boys Barringer had hired to
help him with his digs, and the Haynes really appeared
to be innocent in the whole thing. There was apparently
a bribe that was offered to Zanger also to blame
(14:10):
the hang the Hayne brothers, but Zanger refused to take it. Yeah,
so it pretty quickly became a parent that Roderick and
Eckhart were in fact guilty, and they were disgraced when
that became obvious. So the very thing they had hoped
to avoid by pointing out the hoax and starting the
hoax rumors came to fruition in their trial. So Zonger
(14:31):
was implicated, but it doesn't appear that any real punishment
came to him because he didn't know that they were
faking these stones. But he did ask the Commission for
assistance in collecting eight days worth of wages that Roderick
owed him for polishing stones, which I just thought was
sort of funny. But in the midst of all of this,
he's like, yeah, they were faking, and he still owes
(14:51):
me money for this fraud. I loved it. So what
was the motivation for all of this? It's that the
antagonists wanted to rule and Berenger because quote, he was
so arrogant and despised them all. Yeah, it was just
as simple as that. I have seen some kind of
less um dependable sources that suggested that there may or
(15:13):
may not have been a love affair involved between Um
one of the other academics, and someone that was connected
to Berenger, but I never had any verification of that.
It really does in most articles and discussions of it
kind of come down to you. They just thought he
was an arrogant jerk, right, and they just wanted to
(15:33):
put him in his place. Let's show that jerk face
with our fake fossils. Yeah. And while tales of Barringer's
shame and demise completely colored the apocryphal story, as you said,
it's kind of a cautionary tale of like, you know,
don't fall for things that you just want to believe,
because you'll end up poor and embarrassed and and die
and early death because of your shame. He actually emerged
(15:56):
from the hoax ordeal pretty well in his time, and
he went on to write two more books that were
not about fossils. Uh. So he really came out pretty
well in the whole deal. So. Eckhart, on the other hand,
died four years after the trial, and he had actually
been working on a history of the Duchy of Votzberg
for many years, but after this all happened, he was
denied access to the library archives. Uh, and he never
(16:19):
got to finish that work. Roderick left Wurtzburg in shame.
Berenger died in seventeen forty, which was fourteen years after
the hoax trial. And even though the remainder of his
life seems to have gone pretty well, he has not
been treated terribly well by history. He's become kind of
a symbol of gullibility and um the foolishness of cognitive bias.
(16:41):
In seventeen sixty seven, which was twenty seven years after
his death and forty one years after the original publication
and trial, bereng Jer's Wurtzburg Lithography was republished and forty
four hundred thirty four of Berenger stones, which came to
be known as Yugensteina, which literally really means live stones
(17:01):
or lying stones, actually survive. There were four d and
ninety four depicted in the book, UH, and many of
the collection that remains are at the University Museum at Oxford.
Berenger claimed that he had received more than two thousand,
but it's possible that that's a bit of an inflated number,
so UH, you can go visit some of these stones.
(17:22):
Some of them are apparently in the hands of private
collectors as well, because they are still significant in their
in antiquity and continue to be a cautionary tale. Even
though if he did not die in shame immediately after,
he went after the people that tried to make a
fool of him, which I kind of love about the story.
Don't be a jerk or fall prey to your own
(17:44):
humorist is the moral of this story. Yeah. So that
is the story of Johann Berenger's Lying Stones, which I
sort of just love. It's one of the stories that
we wish there were even more records. There are no
like portraits of him, for example, but I still just
love that it's studied and examined. And Uh, as we've said,
(18:04):
it's become almost like a fairy tale told to archaeology
students on how not to be duped. I believe you
have some listener mail my maw. Indeed. Uh, this actually
came to us on Facebook and it was in relation
to a listener mail I had read about Caesar's horse
(18:24):
possibly having toes instead of hooves. Uh. And this is
from our listener Adam. And he says, Hi, there a
long time listener, first time writer, YadA, YadA, but high
and he said, my listener mail about Caesar's horse comes
from Stonius is the Twelve Caesars. Here's the quote in
full quote. He wrote, A remarkable horse too, with feet
that were almost human, for its hoofs were cloven in
(18:45):
such a way as to look like toes. The horse
was fold on his own place, and since the soothsayers
had declared that it foretold the rule of the world,
for its master, he reared it with the greatest care,
and was the first to mount it, for it would
endure no other rider. After words, too, he dedicated a
statue of it before the Temple of Venus Genetrics, which
I hope I pronounced correctly. Uh this was published, Adam
(19:08):
goes on to say, in about a d so far
before the fourteenth century day your listener was able to
trace it back to the problem with using Suetonius as
a historical source is that he does not judge the
validity of many of the statements that he includes in
his histories, although he sometimes does put in his own
two cents. Instead, he reports what others have said. Often
this means that he is reporting a source that we
(19:29):
have either lost the original source or we have no
idea where he got it from. In the Twelve Caesars,
you get many folk tales, competing versions of events, and
mystical explanations. What you get is a popular history and
a great story for those of us who studied history.
We must remember that this was before any true historical
theory had been established, so there's no filter. What it
does show us is how people who lived at the
(19:51):
time understood their own history, and it can also be
used to confirm or support other versions that can be
found elsewhere. Thanks so much, Adam, that's so cool. We
also have a listener Jim on Twitter that mentioned it. Yes. Uh,
he pretty much pointed us to the source, and then
I went looking on the internet and found that you can,
because it's so old, get that entire book on the
internet to read the whole thing if you want to. Yeah,
(20:12):
it was part of Project Gutenberg, and I think in
my reply to Adam on our page if Anybody happens
Secia is the link to the Project Gutenberg too, So yeah,
it's kind of a cool thing. There is. There are
many sources of having the possible vestigil chose that we've
talked about before. Yeah, And and the thought at first
(20:34):
that that was what people were talking about, And then
there was some discussion about whether the hoops had actually
been cloven by a person to make them look like toes,
so that it was like a human modification of course,
which sounds terrible and painful to me, rather than sort
of a naturally occurring and atavism in the horse's feet. Yes,
(20:56):
but as we know, horses did have a digil toes
and sometimes they still love the bones that's that are
part of that mechanism that are just above the hoof apparently. Yes,
fascinating stuff the way animals evolved. Uh so, yeah, we
love that letter. It was super cool. Adam is uh
very knowledgeable about the twelve Caesars and it's really fun
(21:18):
to talk to you about it. I love all the
analysis of where the twelve Caesars fits in to sort
of understand history. Yeah, awesome, I love it. So if
you would like to write us with your insights and
knowledge of history, you can do so at History Podcast
at Discovery dot com. You can also connect with us
on Facebook like Adam did, which is Facebook dot com,
(21:38):
slash history class stuff, or on Twitter like Jim did
at missed in History. We're also on tumbler at missed
in History dot tumbler dot com, and we're on Pinterest.
And if you would like to learn more about the
subject we talked about today, you can go to our
website and type in the words lying stones and you
will turn up a new article called ten famous vac
Antiques and the suckers who bought them, Although not all
(22:00):
those people are shuckers, a lot of them fooled experts.
So it's an interesting read on ways that other people
have been hoaxed by fake items. And if you would
like to learn about almost anything else you can think of,
you can do that at our website as well. And
that website is how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it how
(22:22):
stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff You Missed
in History Class is brought to you by Audible
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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