September 29, 2021 • 13 mins
There’s a long-standing legend that an Irish monk was the first European to sail to America - in 500 CE! Is there any evidence?
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Dave's here in spirit. So that's a short stuff quorum.
That's all you need. And this is short stuff. That's right,
and we're here. We're here to dispel the rumor that
Christopher Columbus discovered America. That's so old. That is pretty old.
Are we really going to talk about that? No, No,
(00:25):
we don't have to do that. That was definitely a
two thousand eightish two thousand nine is kind of thing
to say. But what are we going to dispel? Well,
so I think one of the things we should at
least say, because not everybody knows this is like the
first Europeans definitively to reach North America. We're the Vikings.
(00:45):
I know a lot of people know that, but not
everybody knows that, Chuck. Not everybody knows that there's a
Viking settlement that was discovered. I think they suspected for
a long time because I think in the North Sagas
they basically said, yeah, we made it to Newfoundland, um
that the Vikings actually had made it to North America.
And then finally in the sixties, I think they found
a real deal bona fide, totally incontrovertible Viking settlement from
(01:10):
about one thousand CE at a place called Lanceo Meadows,
which I've always wanted to go to because I've always
wanted to go to to Newfoundland for one, but to
see like a Viking settlement in America would just that
would be something else that would be great. We could
go berserker, right, take a bunch of shrooms, get a
(01:30):
battle axe. Yeah, and and then celebrate the fact that
they were the very controvertibly, the very first Europeans to
touch that soil. And that's I was gonna wrap up
short stuff. You're right, there is a chance that the
Vikings were even beat So the Vikings would have beat
the age of exploration by about five hundred years. There's
(01:51):
a theory, and it's got some legs conceivably that somebody
else beat the Vikings by five years themselves, and that
some sometime in about the sixth century showed up somewhere
in North America. And who was that? Chuck the Oirish
And I don't buy this, but I think it's a
great story. You don't buy it, and now I think
(02:14):
it is folklore. But we'll we'll talk about it anyway,
because it is a fun story. But in the sixth century,
as the story legend tail goes, St. Brendan was an
Irish monk, very good sailor and seafair, uh very what
saley saintly, saintly and saley. Yeah, supposedly undertook this this voyage,
(02:38):
a joyous voyage of joyage, and with some fellow monks
and went looking for paradise, the land of promise of
the Saints, And after seven years came upon what he
thought was this place, an island so vast that they
did not reach the far shore after forty days of
walking the head a river that was too wide to
(02:59):
be crossed, a forested, wooded land with lush fruits, and
he and the fellows filled their boats full of gems
and returned home. So the Irish found it first, Yeah,
And I mean, like, if you like he ain't talking
about the Azores, you can definitely walk across them in
forty days. There's not a lot of islands in between
Ireland and North America, so it's really not clear. Uh
(03:24):
you know what same Brendan was talking about where he went,
and he wasn't like a dummy. He didn't accidentally stumble
onto Europe like he sailed to Europe before. He was
like a skilled navigator. So he is assumed as presumed
to know have known enough that he knew what direction
he was traveling in and that this really was like
(03:45):
an all new place that that that his kind had
never set foot in before. That's right. And in the
ninth century, so several hundred years later, there was an
this account, actual an account of this sir fist called
Travels of St. Brendan Uh Navigatio sancti brendani magna carta
(04:08):
master charge. If you take the bus, we all take
the bus. Uh. It was a big hit. It was
translated into a bunch of languages, and um, you know,
it was the account of the journey. They are all
sorts of crazy things in here, which, um, maybe we
should save that for the second half because that's where
it falls apart a bit with me. But should we
(04:29):
talk a little bit about the vikings, uh, maybe lending
some support to this idea? Sure? Yeah, Um, so the
North have those sagas that I was talking about right
where it's basically like we did this, this is neat,
this is cool. Here's something else we did, and there's
like a lot of um, there's a lot of uh
like cre credulity to it, Like there's it's not just
(04:52):
like um Norse mythology, that's almost like a separate thing,
although it's definitely intertwined. Like they they think that these
are actual historical documents in a lot of cases, or
at least have a large kernel of historicity in them.
And so in those sagas they talked about arriving in
Greenland around a thousand see, around the same time they
(05:14):
would have set up the place in Newfoundland, um, and
finding Irish missions that were already there. It's a little odd.
And and also we should say the Norse were familiar
with the Irish already, so they would have known in
Irish mission if they came upon an Irish mission. Yeah. Sure,
So that that would suggest that the Irish beat them
(05:34):
to Greenland at least, which is pretty pretty significant. Yeah.
There was another saga where they talked about meeting some
of the Native Americans who already had seen white men.
They're like, we know guys like you, and we've encountered
guys sort of like you. They were dressed in white
and they came from Land across from their own or
our own I guess if I'm in character. And then
(05:56):
there was a third saga that talks about the Norse
encountering a tribe of Native Americans who spoke a language
that even sounded like Irish. Right, So a lot of
little clues here. Yeah, these are recorded by the North
and they definitely do suggest that there was possibly some
Irish who made their way over to the New World
before the Vikings even did. But like you said, there
(06:19):
is a lot of um. There's a heaping helping of
folklore along with all of this, and for people like you, Chuck,
it breaks down everything. I like to hold out hope
that this is possible and true. And let's talk about
it a little more after these commercial breaks. All right,
(07:08):
we're in a divided camp. How divided? Uh? This is
when the petroglyph comes in. Barry Fell, who was a
marine biologist at Havid University, found some petroglyphs, which are
rock carved writings in West Virginia, and he said, you
(07:29):
know what these are. This is ogam script. This is
this is an Irish alphabet and it was used from
the sixth to the eighth century. And I even think
I know what it's saying. They're talking about the Christian
Nativity write on a rock, sure, and that's Irish, clearly, Uh,
it's not, you know, from Native Americans. And Fell said, here,
(07:51):
everyone take a look at this stuff. And the academic
world said, I don't know about that. I don't even
know if this, I don't know about your methods is
definitely not a fact, I said, aren't you a marine biologists? Exactly?
And this could be ogam script, but it's really not
proving anything. No, so the the it's still not definitively
(08:16):
been shown. Who wrote that. It's called the Horse Creek
petroglyphs near Clear Fork, West Virginia, UM And they don't
know who wrote it. But I think the local um
Archaeological Society came out and said it's pretty racist to
assume that rather than the local indigenous people leaving these petroglyphs,
(08:37):
that it was some mythical Irish um monk who made
his way over here allegedly rather than the people we
know we're here in this area at that time. UM.
But regardless of whether that's the case or not, like
no one has said, oh, well, it was these people
and this is what it said, So there's still definitely
room for speculation. But from what I understand, there's there's
(09:00):
virtually no academic who who believes that this is in
fact ogham script, and even if it is an ogam,
that it doesn't necessarily talk about the Nativity, so we
can kind of discard that as evidence, like there's there's
not certainly not in controvertible evidence of Irish presence because
of that those petroglyphs. Yeah, and where it follows apart
(09:22):
for me, but not not. I've been thinking about it,
maybe not completely. Is when you start to look at
the account the Navagaccio, the Travels of St. Brendan, which
was the account of his voyage, it is it is
really out there and wacky. It talks about an island
with an Ethiopian devil, an island with monks who celebrated
(09:44):
Christmas who were just there. Uh, they fought a griffin
at one point and killed a griffin, um, all kinds
of fantastical stuff. They went to one island and set
up camp and then it turned out, oh, my goodness,
is not an island. We're actually on a giant whale.
So let's hold communion so let's have communion. I don't
know if that was where the communion was. It was
(10:05):
a bunch of whale stuff, but they definitely held communion
on a whale at some point. It might have been
that chapter. But it's kind of crazy stuff. And I
started looking into it. There were what it is is
an Irish im ram, which were the seventh and eighth
century uh seafaring adventure tales written by the Irish, and
it fits in with that, and so I immediately dismissed.
(10:27):
I was like, no, this is just an uh m
rom and it's you know, it's just made up. But
I thought, well, maybe not. Maybe it took the style
of that because that was what was popular, and maybe
it really did happen, but it just they gussies it
up with these fantastical tales. They dressed it up. Yeah.
And then Navogaccio was written about two to three hundred
(10:47):
years after St. Brennan would have lived, right, so it
certainly wasn't his own account of it. But the it's
almost like, to me, it's almost like Hamilton's Like if
you came along and saw Hamilton's the musical, You're like,
this is ridiculous. They didn't rap right. Um, You're like,
there's a larger point to and that there was a
(11:07):
person named Alexander and Alexander Hamilton's he did do these things,
you know, but it is dressed up to make it
palatable or understandable to people at the time and then embellished.
I'm sure, although I don't think Alexander Hamilton's would have
given commune on the back of a whale. Um, but
it's still in the same ballpark. And to me, just
because somebody came along and dressed it up with with folklore,
(11:30):
clearly folklore doesn't mean that there's It doesn't remove the
possibility that there is a lot of kernels of truth
still in there somewhere. Yeah, I kind of, I kind
of got there during the last eight minutes. I'm glad
about that. What is interesting is one of the things
that they kind of used to say no, this probably
couldn't have happened was the fact that the sailing technology
(11:51):
at the time, the boating technology that he would have
likely used is this little boat called a curoc and
it a see you are are a c h and
it's this you know, it's a it's a homemade boat.
Basically made out of wood with an ox hide and
like tar and stuff to put it together. And they're like,
there's no way this guy could have made it that
far in one of these crocs, and in UH, an author,
(12:16):
an adventurer named Tim Severin, said, you know what, I'm
going to see if this is possible, And he built
one of those, supposedly in the style that they would
have built them back then, and he retraced that route
that Brendan is believed to have taken from Ireland to
Iceland and Greenland and eventually Newfoundland, and he made it. Yeah,
(12:37):
he showed it is entirely possible. And again this this
same Brendan was supposed to be a very skilled navigator.
So it's possible at least that that that happened if
sing Brendan actually did exist. Like many stuff you should know,
shorties the ends with a big shoulder shrug, a big
shoulder shrug, puffy question mark with a heart for the dot. Amen. Uh.
(13:04):
And by the way, you can read this article um
that we found on how stuff works. I wrote it
myself back in the day and with that short Stuff
is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I Heart Radio For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
(13:26):
to your favorite shows. H
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Dave's here in spirit. So that's a short stuff quorum.
That's all you need. And this is short stuff. That's right,
and we're here. We're here to dispel the rumor that
Christopher Columbus discovered America. That's so old. That is pretty old.
Are we really going to talk about that? No, No,
(00:25):
we don't have to do that. That was definitely a
two thousand eightish two thousand nine is kind of thing
to say. But what are we going to dispel? Well,
so I think one of the things we should at
least say, because not everybody knows this is like the
first Europeans definitively to reach North America. We're the Vikings.
(00:45):
I know a lot of people know that, but not
everybody knows that, Chuck. Not everybody knows that there's a
Viking settlement that was discovered. I think they suspected for
a long time because I think in the North Sagas
they basically said, yeah, we made it to Newfoundland, um
that the Vikings actually had made it to North America.
And then finally in the sixties, I think they found
a real deal bona fide, totally incontrovertible Viking settlement from
(01:10):
about one thousand CE at a place called Lanceo Meadows,
which I've always wanted to go to because I've always
wanted to go to to Newfoundland for one, but to
see like a Viking settlement in America would just that
would be something else that would be great. We could
go berserker, right, take a bunch of shrooms, get a
(01:30):
battle axe. Yeah, and and then celebrate the fact that
they were the very controvertibly, the very first Europeans to
touch that soil. And that's I was gonna wrap up
short stuff. You're right, there is a chance that the
Vikings were even beat So the Vikings would have beat
the age of exploration by about five hundred years. There's
(01:51):
a theory, and it's got some legs conceivably that somebody
else beat the Vikings by five years themselves, and that
some sometime in about the sixth century showed up somewhere
in North America. And who was that? Chuck the Oirish
And I don't buy this, but I think it's a
great story. You don't buy it, and now I think
(02:14):
it is folklore. But we'll we'll talk about it anyway,
because it is a fun story. But in the sixth century,
as the story legend tail goes, St. Brendan was an
Irish monk, very good sailor and seafair, uh very what
saley saintly, saintly and saley. Yeah, supposedly undertook this this voyage,
(02:38):
a joyous voyage of joyage, and with some fellow monks
and went looking for paradise, the land of promise of
the Saints, And after seven years came upon what he
thought was this place, an island so vast that they
did not reach the far shore after forty days of
walking the head a river that was too wide to
(02:59):
be crossed, a forested, wooded land with lush fruits, and
he and the fellows filled their boats full of gems
and returned home. So the Irish found it first, Yeah,
And I mean, like, if you like he ain't talking
about the Azores, you can definitely walk across them in
forty days. There's not a lot of islands in between
Ireland and North America, so it's really not clear. Uh
(03:24):
you know what same Brendan was talking about where he went,
and he wasn't like a dummy. He didn't accidentally stumble
onto Europe like he sailed to Europe before. He was
like a skilled navigator. So he is assumed as presumed
to know have known enough that he knew what direction
he was traveling in and that this really was like
(03:45):
an all new place that that that his kind had
never set foot in before. That's right. And in the
ninth century, so several hundred years later, there was an
this account, actual an account of this sir fist called
Travels of St. Brendan Uh Navigatio sancti brendani magna carta
(04:08):
master charge. If you take the bus, we all take
the bus. Uh. It was a big hit. It was
translated into a bunch of languages, and um, you know,
it was the account of the journey. They are all
sorts of crazy things in here, which, um, maybe we
should save that for the second half because that's where
it falls apart a bit with me. But should we
(04:29):
talk a little bit about the vikings, uh, maybe lending
some support to this idea? Sure? Yeah, Um, so the
North have those sagas that I was talking about right
where it's basically like we did this, this is neat,
this is cool. Here's something else we did, and there's
like a lot of um, there's a lot of uh
like cre credulity to it, Like there's it's not just
(04:52):
like um Norse mythology, that's almost like a separate thing,
although it's definitely intertwined. Like they they think that these
are actual historical documents in a lot of cases, or
at least have a large kernel of historicity in them.
And so in those sagas they talked about arriving in
Greenland around a thousand see, around the same time they
(05:14):
would have set up the place in Newfoundland, um, and
finding Irish missions that were already there. It's a little odd.
And and also we should say the Norse were familiar
with the Irish already, so they would have known in
Irish mission if they came upon an Irish mission. Yeah. Sure,
So that that would suggest that the Irish beat them
(05:34):
to Greenland at least, which is pretty pretty significant. Yeah.
There was another saga where they talked about meeting some
of the Native Americans who already had seen white men.
They're like, we know guys like you, and we've encountered
guys sort of like you. They were dressed in white
and they came from Land across from their own or
our own I guess if I'm in character. And then
(05:56):
there was a third saga that talks about the Norse
encountering a tribe of Native Americans who spoke a language
that even sounded like Irish. Right, So a lot of
little clues here. Yeah, these are recorded by the North
and they definitely do suggest that there was possibly some
Irish who made their way over to the New World
before the Vikings even did. But like you said, there
(06:19):
is a lot of um. There's a heaping helping of
folklore along with all of this, and for people like you, Chuck,
it breaks down everything. I like to hold out hope
that this is possible and true. And let's talk about
it a little more after these commercial breaks. All right,
(07:08):
we're in a divided camp. How divided? Uh? This is
when the petroglyph comes in. Barry Fell, who was a
marine biologist at Havid University, found some petroglyphs, which are
rock carved writings in West Virginia, and he said, you
(07:29):
know what these are. This is ogam script. This is
this is an Irish alphabet and it was used from
the sixth to the eighth century. And I even think
I know what it's saying. They're talking about the Christian
Nativity write on a rock, sure, and that's Irish, clearly, Uh,
it's not, you know, from Native Americans. And Fell said, here,
(07:51):
everyone take a look at this stuff. And the academic
world said, I don't know about that. I don't even
know if this, I don't know about your methods is
definitely not a fact, I said, aren't you a marine biologists? Exactly?
And this could be ogam script, but it's really not
proving anything. No, so the the it's still not definitively
(08:16):
been shown. Who wrote that. It's called the Horse Creek
petroglyphs near Clear Fork, West Virginia, UM And they don't
know who wrote it. But I think the local um
Archaeological Society came out and said it's pretty racist to
assume that rather than the local indigenous people leaving these petroglyphs,
(08:37):
that it was some mythical Irish um monk who made
his way over here allegedly rather than the people we
know we're here in this area at that time. UM.
But regardless of whether that's the case or not, like
no one has said, oh, well, it was these people
and this is what it said, So there's still definitely
room for speculation. But from what I understand, there's there's
(09:00):
virtually no academic who who believes that this is in
fact ogham script, and even if it is an ogam,
that it doesn't necessarily talk about the Nativity, so we
can kind of discard that as evidence, like there's there's
not certainly not in controvertible evidence of Irish presence because
of that those petroglyphs. Yeah, and where it follows apart
(09:22):
for me, but not not. I've been thinking about it,
maybe not completely. Is when you start to look at
the account the Navagaccio, the Travels of St. Brendan, which
was the account of his voyage, it is it is
really out there and wacky. It talks about an island
with an Ethiopian devil, an island with monks who celebrated
(09:44):
Christmas who were just there. Uh, they fought a griffin
at one point and killed a griffin, um, all kinds
of fantastical stuff. They went to one island and set
up camp and then it turned out, oh, my goodness,
is not an island. We're actually on a giant whale.
So let's hold communion so let's have communion. I don't
know if that was where the communion was. It was
(10:05):
a bunch of whale stuff, but they definitely held communion
on a whale at some point. It might have been
that chapter. But it's kind of crazy stuff. And I
started looking into it. There were what it is is
an Irish im ram, which were the seventh and eighth
century uh seafaring adventure tales written by the Irish, and
it fits in with that, and so I immediately dismissed.
(10:27):
I was like, no, this is just an uh m
rom and it's you know, it's just made up. But
I thought, well, maybe not. Maybe it took the style
of that because that was what was popular, and maybe
it really did happen, but it just they gussies it
up with these fantastical tales. They dressed it up. Yeah.
And then Navogaccio was written about two to three hundred
(10:47):
years after St. Brennan would have lived, right, so it
certainly wasn't his own account of it. But the it's
almost like, to me, it's almost like Hamilton's Like if
you came along and saw Hamilton's the musical, You're like,
this is ridiculous. They didn't rap right. Um, You're like,
there's a larger point to and that there was a
(11:07):
person named Alexander and Alexander Hamilton's he did do these things,
you know, but it is dressed up to make it
palatable or understandable to people at the time and then embellished.
I'm sure, although I don't think Alexander Hamilton's would have
given commune on the back of a whale. Um, but
it's still in the same ballpark. And to me, just
because somebody came along and dressed it up with with folklore,
(11:30):
clearly folklore doesn't mean that there's It doesn't remove the
possibility that there is a lot of kernels of truth
still in there somewhere. Yeah, I kind of, I kind
of got there during the last eight minutes. I'm glad
about that. What is interesting is one of the things
that they kind of used to say no, this probably
couldn't have happened was the fact that the sailing technology
(11:51):
at the time, the boating technology that he would have
likely used is this little boat called a curoc and
it a see you are are a c h and
it's this you know, it's a it's a homemade boat.
Basically made out of wood with an ox hide and
like tar and stuff to put it together. And they're like,
there's no way this guy could have made it that
far in one of these crocs, and in UH, an author,
(12:16):
an adventurer named Tim Severin, said, you know what, I'm
going to see if this is possible, And he built
one of those, supposedly in the style that they would
have built them back then, and he retraced that route
that Brendan is believed to have taken from Ireland to
Iceland and Greenland and eventually Newfoundland, and he made it. Yeah,
(12:37):
he showed it is entirely possible. And again this this
same Brendan was supposed to be a very skilled navigator.
So it's possible at least that that that happened if
sing Brendan actually did exist. Like many stuff you should know,
shorties the ends with a big shoulder shrug, a big
shoulder shrug, puffy question mark with a heart for the dot. Amen. Uh.
(13:04):
And by the way, you can read this article um
that we found on how stuff works. I wrote it
myself back in the day and with that short Stuff
is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I Heart Radio For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
(13:26):
to your favorite shows. H
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