A Conspiracy of Women

Presented by: Cristina
Category: Historical Mystery

The Blue/Conspiracy posits that humans could not see the color blue until relatively recently. It was first proposed in the 1800s when William Gladstone, while analyzing The Odyssey, noted the weird colors assigned by Homer. For example, he described honey as being green and the sea as being "dark wine". However, nowhere in the poem is anything described as blue.

The theory was examined by Lazarus Gieger, who analyzed ancient languages looking for the color blue. The following languages, he discovered, had no such word:


 * Icelandic
 * Chinese
 * Hindi
 * Arabic
 * Egyptian
 * Hebrew
 * Albanian
 * Celtic
 * Korean
 * Greek
 * Vietnamese
 * Iranian
 * Japanese

The first Ancient language to have a word for blue is Egyptian, which was also the first civilization to create a dye for the color.

Central to the question is a chicken and the egg scenario. Did we develop the word after we could see the color or did seeing the color lead us to inventing a word for it. The effect of language on the perception of color is documented, though sensationalized. A study in Namibia concluded that the Himba tribe, which does not have a word for the color blue, had difficulty distinguishing the color from green. Likewise, Russians, who do have a word for blue, distinguished shades much more easily than other colors.

An informal experiment conducted by Gary Deutscher saw his daughter first describe the sky as white before describing it as blue.

The question of colorblindness was also raised, with Chelsea putting forth the idea that men are more likely to be color bind and since they wrote most of history until recently, it was more likely for blue to escape notice than if women had been listened to. This may tie into the theory that they ability to see blue is a useful mutation and adaptation that spread across the population.

Presented by: Chelsea
Category: Historical Mystery

The Voynich Manuscript refers document discovered by a book collector named Wilfred Voynich in 1912. Dated to the early 15th century (1404-1438) and suspected to be written in northern Italy during the Renaissance, the manuscript is famous for being written in an unknown language.

The manuscript is written on around 240 pages (depending on how you count the fold out pages), with an estimated minimum 28 pages still missing. There are an estimated 35000 words, though the unknown syntax means these could be sentences or even paragraphs. All attempts to decipher it, including use of the IBM computer and the efforts of WWI and WWII codebreakers, have failed.

The drawings on the pages give the only clues as to the nature of the manuscript. Most of the codex is devoted to pages on herbalism and the parts of plants, but others details topics related to astrology, biology and cosmology. The format of some of the pages suggest that the manuscript contains a number of recipes as well.

In 2017, known liar Nicholas Gibbs claimed to have translated some of the text into Latin, but critics noted that his translation would be inconsistent with proper Latin grammar. He also insisted on the existence of a missing page that would have deciphered the entire manuscript on the basis of no evidence. His article did, however, did draw attention to the most likely conclusion.

Written during the European Witch Trials, where over 100,000 witches were killed (more than 85% of which were women), it was common for women doctors and healers to be killed on the grounds that their knowledge of medicine was based on deals with the devil. While we will likely never know for sure, the Voynich manuscript is most likely a health manual written in code to protect these women from persecution.

Trivia

 * An early use of a klaxon.
 * The women's language of Nüshu is referenced.