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03:34Ξέχναι, για να δούμε ανάρτου κάθε προσφέρια,
03:36γι'ναισύνη μετά, υπάρχει πως αλλάξης μετά από την πρόκληση.
03:39Προστάσεις διευθύνει να είχαμε δικαιώσεις από το πανένα,
03:42το οποίος ήταν το αρχιστικό πέννας περισσότερο πανένα της πανένας.
03:47Οι πανένας που θα ήσουν επίσης από αριτώνης,
03:49αυτή ήταν πως το πιο πλάτημα που θα έρθει.
03:52ναν όμως δεν συμβείς του κατωρίου.
03:59Αλλά αυτό δεν δείχνει ίσοτίας.
04:04Και από τον αρχινό του 1960s,
04:07έκαναν μια επιφωνή σχόδια ακριβά από τον ζημανίς
04:09ίσόλας στον έκλον της CETI,
04:11την ανθρώπιση για τον Ιντελείγμα ΙΠ.
04:14Και για την πρώτη συμβιλία,
04:15πvisorπον πως υπολοκροσφωνηματι κάτω από το νομιχτρο,
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06:24The golden record.
06:26The idea was that if in some distant future,
06:30thousands or even millions of years hence,
06:32some alien civilization were to come across this bizarre artifact
06:36floating in deep space,
06:37and then maybe decode the information that's contained on it,
06:41find out something about the strange species
06:43that sent this tiny little traveler off deep into interstellar space.
06:47It is a message in a bottle,
06:50a message to a race of spacefaring aliens.
06:53To my mind, the golden disk is, I guess, a dream, a hope,
06:58that one day something out there might find it
07:02and realize that we're here and we're alive and we want to make contact.
07:05But if NASA is really serious about making first contact
07:09with an advanced alien species,
07:11why on earth do they send something as old-fashioned as a record?
07:18That decision falls to the man who NASA selects
07:21to produce their interstellar message.
07:24Carl Sagan.
07:26Carl Sagan was one of the most famous scientists
07:29and science communicators of the 20th century.
07:31At heart, he was an astronomer,
07:33but he was also one of the world's first astrobiologists.
07:36He was really interested in the nitty-gritty science
07:38of what aliens would actually look like.
07:40Whatever format Sagan chooses to carry his message to the stars
07:47has to survive thousands of years.
07:50And space is a brutal place.
07:53Beyond the Earth's atmosphere, there's a very harsh environment.
07:58Radiation from the sun blasts you.
08:01Temperature ranges are suddenly huge.
08:04It's a very dangerous environment.
08:07So it's actually very difficult to think about
08:10what sort of object is going to be able to retain information
08:14in that environment.
08:16Sagan ignores the magnetic tapes used in 70s computers.
08:25The tape itself would disintegrate in space.
08:28Instead, he goes old school.
08:31Vinyl.
08:32The idea of using a phonograph, a record,
08:35to send information seems bizarre.
08:38Even in the 70s, it was dated a technology.
08:41But it was a good way to go.
08:43It's a physical object.
08:46The information is stored on it
08:48in these tiny little grooves
08:50that are carved into the material.
08:53They're going to be able to withstand
08:55a bit of bombardment from high-energy particles.
08:58They assume that any species
09:00capable of building spacecraft
09:02will be able to work out how to play the disc.
09:05And for good measure,
09:06they decide to include a record needle under the cover.
09:10But actual vinyl, the material, isn't space proof.
09:15So they pimp it up.
09:17They decided they would make it out of metal.
09:20In fact, they made it out of engraved copper.
09:23And then to make sure that it was going to last for a long time,
09:27they coated the copper with gold.
09:29Because gold is a very inert metal.
09:32It doesn't corrode.
09:33It doesn't degrade easily.
09:35Sagan's next problem is what to put on his intergalactic record.
09:41How can he sum up all of humanity and the world around us
09:47on a 12-inch LP?
09:49The challenge posed by this is immense.
09:57You have got one record,
10:00and on it you somehow have to sum up
10:03the nature of human civilization in all its many forms.
10:07What do you put on the record?
10:09NASA gives Sagan just eight months
10:11to complete and deliver the entire project.
10:14He builds a team from scientists, musicologists, and artists.
10:20It includes SETI pioneer Frank Drake
10:23and author Ann Druyan, Sagan's future wife.
10:29The first thing the disc does is say hi from everyone on Earth.
10:35The beginning of the record has a greeting from the UN Secretary General
10:39and greetings in 55 different languages.
10:43One of the weirdest things is that two of those greetings,
10:48one of them is Sumerian and another is Ancient Greek,
10:51neither of which have been spoken for quite some time.
10:57Greetings done?
10:58The aliens can relax with 90 minutes of eclectic tunes,
11:02the greatest hits of an entire planet.
11:05You've got Mozart's Magic Flute Opera.
11:08A Georgian folk song.
11:10Johann Sebastian Bach, of course.
11:12Songs from Navajo Indians.
11:14The Brandenburg Concertos.
11:16Indonesian Gamelan music.
11:17A Japanese song about cranes.
11:19And, of course, Chuck Berry's Johnny Be Good.
11:22Sagan is a pioneer here
11:25in that he's put together a collection of world music
11:29before the term or concept world music was really in common usage.
11:34Then there's the sounds of the Earth,
11:37a rousing compilation of wind,
11:39thunder,
11:41an erupting volcano,
11:43animal noises,
11:45Morse code,
11:47a train,
11:49a tractor,
11:50a moon rocket,
11:52and a kiss.
11:56Sagan wants this to be a truly multimedia experience
11:59for our new alien friends.
12:01So it gets a photo album, too.
12:04By an incredibly fortunate coincidence,
12:06the technology had just been developed
12:08to allow images to be recorded to vinyl discs.
12:10But there is space for just 115 pictures.
12:15Surprisingly, Sagan wastes the first one on a plain circle.
12:20The thinking being that circles are universal structures.
12:29They will be circles anywhere in the universe.
12:31And any alien civilization intelligent enough to start decoding this message
12:37will figure out pretty quickly that this was a circle.
12:40So aliens can use this to tell if the pictures are the correct shape.
12:46That leaves space for just 114 more pictures to show to the aliens.
12:51When we look at a photograph,
12:53you have a much better idea of what you're looking at than an alien might.
12:56So the picture of a couple of people holding hands,
12:59would an alien even recognize that those are separate organisms
13:01or would they think that's just one giant creature?
13:04The pictures they choose cover biology,
13:09animals, plants, our planet,
13:13our behavior, our civilizations,
13:16and our accomplishments.
13:18All in just 115 images.
13:21The final addition to the disc is a one-hour recording of human brain waves.
13:28just in case aliens can read our minds.
13:33The Voyager golden record is a pretty good answer
13:36to a frankly ridiculous question,
13:38which is how can you encapsulate the entire works,
13:41the entire history of a species, life on a planet,
13:44a planet, a solar system,
13:45on basically two sides of a long playing record.
13:48The content is the easy bit.
13:51The tricky part is the instructions.
13:54These will be engraved on the disc's cover.
13:57But how do you create instructions that aliens will understand?
14:06The team's only assumption is that anyone who finds the disc
14:10will already have made it into space.
14:12But they won't speak or read any human language,
14:16and their measurements for time and distance will be totally,
14:19well, alien.
14:21So what unit of measure could possibly be considered literally universal?
14:28The genius answer comes from Frank Drake.
14:32If you listen to the universe with the right radio at the right frequency,
14:36you can hear a signal.
14:38And it's a signal that pervades throughout the universe.
14:40Because it's a signal created by the most common element in the universe.
14:44This signal is known as the hydrogen hyperfine transition.
14:53Drake's choice of using the hydrogen frequency was a brilliant one.
14:56Any intelligent beings out there would be aware of this frequency.
15:00It's wavelength is almost exactly 21 centimeters long.
15:05And the time it takes for a single oscillation is 0.7 of a billionth of a second.
15:11And those measurements are the same everywhere in the universe.
15:15The frequency of the oscillation gives you a universal unit of time.
15:21The wavelength of that oscillation gives you a universal unit of distance.
15:27To explain this to aliens, Sagan engraves on the cover
15:31a tiny drawing of two hydrogen atoms representing the hyperfine transition.
15:36So imagine you're an alien and you find this disc.
15:39You can use it to explain how tall a human being is
15:42how big the solar system is in terms of hydrogen hyperfine wavelengths.
15:45Or you can use it to explain time.
15:47How long it takes a human baby to be born.
15:49Or even how fast you have to play this record.
15:53The next problem is numbers.
15:56How exactly does an alien count?
15:59Now most of us work in base 10.
16:01What that means is we've got digits from 0 to 9, which is 10 digits in total.
16:04And that makes big numbers easier to write in a small space.
16:07But essentially it's completely arbitrary.
16:09Sagan can't rely on aliens counting in tens.
16:12But there is one system that any intelligent being should recognize.
16:16The numerical information on the golden record is encoded in binary.
16:20So just using ones and zeros.
16:22And the reason is that binary is perhaps the most fundamental numerical system.
16:27If they're advanced enough to be spacefaring,
16:29hopefully they'll be able to understand the mathematics that we've used.
16:34At high magnification you can see a picture of the record itself on the cover.
16:39And engraved around it in binary is the speed it should rotate at.
16:43Sixteen and two thirds RPM.
16:47And a diagram of nearby stars with their distances, also marked in binary,
16:52gives directions to Earth.
16:54There's one last unplanned but very human addition to the record.
17:01Under extreme magnification there's a faint inscription,
17:04scratched into the surface by the men that cut the master disc.
17:08It reads to the makers of music, all worlds, all times.
17:15And there you have it.
17:16A snapshot of human life on Earth and the means for E.T. to read it.
17:21All contained in one LP.
17:24So what has become of these interstellar messengers?
17:32The Voyager spacecraft transformed our understanding of bodies that are out there.
17:37As the probes went through space we get these images back,
17:40sort of close-ups of Jupiter.
17:42We could just about make the red spot out from Earth using telescopes.
17:45But now we could see a dynamic weather system churning around this amazingly huge planet.
17:54We went out to Saturn and sort of close-up of the rings.
17:59It just transformed our understanding.
18:02Neptune and Uranus had been just points of light from Earth.
18:06And now we could see them as of beautiful sort of aquamarine bodies.
18:11Incredibly, more than 40 years after launch,
18:14both Voyagers are still working.
18:17They have left the solar system,
18:19carrying our message on a golden disc out into the universe.
18:22It will be 40,000 years before either of them passes close to another star.
18:28The golden record is a beautiful, hopeful message
18:31about a bountiful, amazing planet that it comes from.
18:34A huge mixture of different cultures and languages
18:37and even emotions have gone into making this record.
18:40The question is, will anyone or anything ever find them?
18:45In a locked cabinet at Yale University is a strange medieval book
19:00that has confounded historians for a hundred years.
19:05There is just one copy in existence.
19:08We have no idea who wrote it and we have no idea what it's about.
19:14It's one enormous mystery.
19:24This is the Voynich manuscript.
19:27It measures roughly 22 by 16 centimeters.
19:31And its pages are made of calfskin parchment.
19:34It has 240 pages, sometimes with inked illustrations.
19:43Its pages are covered with incomprehensible writing.
19:47It really looks like a language.
19:49But is it?
19:51We can't really make sense of the letters.
19:54Why would anyone create such a detailed book
19:57and then make it impossible to understand?
20:00The text is a riddle, but the drawings aren't much better.
20:04It's packed with arcane symbols and bizarre illustrations.
20:08Like naked ladies bathing, plants and castles.
20:12Now, recent research may finally have uncovered hidden clues in these drawings
20:17that could help explain this mystery.
20:20Despite that, the Voynich manuscript remains an enigma.
20:24Where does it come from?
20:27How old is it?
20:29And what is it trying to tell us?
20:32It could still be a hidden key to unknown mysteries.
20:41Even a brief glance at this bizarre document
20:44raises one very obvious possibility.
20:47When you take everything together, the illegible alphabet,
20:50the weird drawings.
20:52Sooner or later, you have to consider
20:54that might be a relatively modern hoax.
21:00For decades, the Voynich manuscript has been tainted
21:03by accusations that it is a modern fake,
21:06created for the lucrative antiquarian book market.
21:11If it is, the prime suspect has to be the man
21:14who discovered it in 1912, Wilfrid Voynich.
21:20Voynich spent his life looking for rare books and lost manuscripts.
21:24If you were looking for a character who would have had
21:26the correct mental equipment to construct such a fake,
21:30he would certainly be a candidate.
21:32But it is also possible Voynich was the victim of a scam,
21:35perpetrated by the people he bought the manuscript from.
21:39He bought it from a monastery that was in dire need of money,
21:43so maybe they just made something up, gave it to him, sold it,
21:47and got some money for it.
21:49To find the truth, experts have turned to science.
21:54In 2009, scientists at the University of Arizona
21:56managed to use carbon dating to work out
21:58that the manuscript dated from somewhere between 1404 and 1438.
22:02So the vellum it's made from, at least, dates from the appropriate time.
22:06But that doesn't mean it's written in the Middle Ages.
22:10Using old vellum or reusing pages from an old manuscript
22:14is a common forger's trick.
22:16To test this, scientists analyse the ink,
22:20searching for synthetic modern chemicals.
22:22The ink that was used on the manuscript
22:24is very similar to the inks that were used in other medieval manuscripts.
22:27They're made of things like hematite or iron,
22:30naturally occurring simple substances,
22:32rather than the complex hydrocarbons
22:35that are often used as pigments in modern inks.
22:37The combination of different ancient materials
22:40is enough to convince experts.
22:42If you look at the vellum and the ink and the dating of both,
22:46then you know that this is something that is really old.
22:49Which means if it's a fake, it's not a modern fake.
22:53So could it be real?
22:56And if it is, what does it say?
23:02Code breakers and linguists have been trying to decipher
23:05this extraordinary manuscript for decades.
23:09When we look at the possible alphabet,
23:11we see more than 20 letters, maybe 22, 25.
23:16We see something that could be vowels.
23:18We see something that could be numbers.
23:21But beyond that, nobody knows what this alphabet consists of.
23:26Which suggests an obvious possibility.
23:29Perhaps it's not normal writing at all.
23:32Perhaps it's a code.
23:34One idea is that the manuscript could have been written
23:37with what's called a substitution cipher.
23:39And this is a code where you simply take a given letter
23:41of the alphabet or a given symbol
23:43and replace it directly with another one.
23:45So A becomes B, B becomes C, and so on.
23:47And that means you can write things that look very difficult
23:49to read just at first glance.
23:52But substitution ciphers are relatively easy
23:55for mathematicians to spot.
23:58You look at the text and you see which letters
24:00occur most frequently.
24:01So for example, in written English,
24:03the most common letter is the letter E.
24:05So, say you were to find a Z as the most common letter
24:08in the text that you were looking at.
24:09You could guess that maybe that Z corresponded to the letter E.
24:12And then you can go down looking at less and less frequent letters
24:15and slowly but surely build up a picture of the words.
24:20Experts have tested this approach on the enigmatic writing.
24:24When you try and do this with the Voynich manuscript,
24:26you don't come up with anything.
24:28Even when you compare it to loads and loads of different languages,
24:32there's just nothing that seems to work with this technique.
24:34Numerous more sophisticated codes, from polyalphabetic to transposition,
24:42have also been tested by the world's greatest code breakers,
24:45including Alan Turing, who helped crack the Nazi Enigma code.
24:49But the Voynich manuscript has never been deciphered.
24:54Some experts believe it lacks the hallmarks of a truly complex code.
24:59You should see something completely random.
25:02It should just look like total random jumble of letters, numbers and symbols.
25:05But that isn't what we see in the Voynich manuscript.
25:08If it's not a code, maybe the Voynich manuscript
25:11is simply written in an unknown language.
25:17To answer that, experts look at the letter patterns.
25:20Natural languages aren't at all random.
25:23They've got all kinds of patterns that have been built in organically
25:26over a huge period of time.
25:28One of them is the frequency of individual letters,
25:30so some letters are more common than others.
25:32Others are the frequency of different words,
25:34so words like the are much more common than words like xylophone.
25:37And then there's the patterns of grammar, the structure of sentences,
25:40the way that punctuation is laid out.
25:43In 2013, mathematicians and computer scientists
25:48at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil test the Voynich language
25:53to see if it displays the same kind of patterns as known languages.
25:58Scientists have tried to compare objectively things like word length
26:03and the number of letters with English and Portuguese in the Voynich manuscript
26:08to get some idea of whether or not even the kind of word groupings
26:13would make any sense.
26:15And generally speaking, it does kind of fit.
26:18It doesn't fit perfectly, but it's not outside of what we would expect.
26:24What's bizarre is that you look at the Voynich manuscript
26:27and even though we don't know what any of the symbols are or what they mean,
26:30they still seem to have these same kinds of patterns.
26:33This isn't just random gibberish, it really looks like a language.
26:37So the Voynich writing seems to fit the pattern of a real language.
26:44But knowing it's a language is a long way from being able to translate it.
26:50We can identify a word through two routes,
26:53that we've seen that word before and that we've heard that word before.
26:57But the fact that we can't make out what any of the letters are
27:01leaves you in a kind of no man's land
27:03because not only do we not know what these words are,
27:06but we have no idea how they sounded either.
27:09Decades of analysis by code breakers and linguists have failed to unlock the manuscript's writing,
27:16which just leaves the illustrations.
27:19Could they crack the secrets of the Voynich manuscript?
27:23The images on this text are some of the strangest things I've seen.
27:32The manuscript is a riot of colourful and baffling illustrations.
27:37It's a bit like a list of classes at Hogwarts.
27:40You've got kind of herbology, all these beautiful pictures of plants,
27:44and then you have things like images of naked women bathing,
27:49and then very detailed images of a castle.
27:52Now, new research claims these drawings could finally answer the puzzle of the Voynich manuscript.
28:01In 2013, the manuscript's bizarre illustrations catch the eye of two U.S. scholars.
28:08They think they've seen some of the plants in it before.
28:12A couple of American botanists have looked at these images,
28:16and they've seen similarities between the plants depicted in this manuscript
28:21and plants that are native and indigenous to Central America.
28:26They identify nearly 60 plants in the Voynich manuscript
28:30that they believe show a striking correlation with Mexican plants.
28:35Agave, Dioscoria, Silene, Eryngium, and the Viola, and many more.
28:50It certainly seems convincing at first glance.
28:55The idea of identifying this manuscript and connecting it to scholarship from Central America
29:00is an interesting idea, and it's quite creative and innovative.
29:06The botanists have also noted similarities between the Voynich manuscript
29:11and a well-known ancient manuscript on Central American herbology
29:15called the Codex Cruz Batianus.
29:18So has this new research finally begun to crack the secrets of the Voynich manuscript?
29:23Can its origins be traced to Central America?
29:27Is it a Mexican herbology of plants?
29:31Indigenous cultures certainly have writing and a sophisticated knowledge of the natural world.
29:37But there are problems with this idea.
29:40For one thing, the timing seems off.
29:46The vellum in the Voynich manuscript has been dated to around 1404 to 1438.
29:52The problem is, and it's a big one,
29:57at this date, Europeans won't discover the Americas for another 50 years.
30:02And the Codex Cruz Batianus that it's been compared with
30:07isn't written for a hundred years after the vellum's dating.
30:11Is it possible that after someone made this valuable vellum,
30:16it sat unused for a hundred years?
30:19It's not completely out of the question, but it does seem pretty unlikely.
30:24And even if you ignore the dating issues,
30:28other illustrations point towards an origin much closer to home.
30:32There is an intricate drawing of a castle,
30:37and there are aspects of the architecture that are identifiable
30:41as what they would call Ghibelline architecture.
30:44It's particularly, I think, the crenellations on the turrets.
30:47And they're in kind of central northern Italy,
30:50around that kind of northern border.
30:53So, is it a book on Mexico or some unknown text on Europe?
31:00Or something else entirely?
31:02No one seems certain.
31:05But there is one final clue,
31:07a clue that might at last tell us the origins of the Voynich manuscript.
31:12It's a letter dating to 1639 that mentions the manuscript.
31:20According to the letter, the book was owned by an alchemist in Prague
31:24by the name of George Baresh.
31:26Almost nobody had ever heard of Baresh.
31:29But there is a second clue that also ties the manuscript to Prague.
31:35But it's only visible under UV light.
31:38Another tantalizing detail is that a signature was found
31:43on the title page of the volume of a man named Tapanitz,
31:47who was a herbalist in the court of Rudolf II.
31:52Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor,
31:55one of the most colorful characters in Renaissance Europe.
31:59Rudolf II was exactly the sort of person
32:02who would want to acquire a manuscript like this.
32:05He had the money, he had the interests,
32:08and he didn't necessarily need to understand it himself.
32:11He just needed enough people around him telling him
32:14that it was fascinating and important.
32:18So could Prague and Rudolf II explain the manuscript's origins?
32:23If you were looking to sell something for a high price,
32:27something which featured an untranslatable text
32:32and mysterious illustrations,
32:35which seemed to cross continents and cultures,
32:38what better place to try to shop this
32:40than in the court of Rudolf II?
32:42Is this the real truth behind this strange book?
32:48Unfortunately, there seem to be as many explanations as there are experts.
32:53I personally see a lot of drawings and scripts
32:58and very, very long texts of people who have a psychosis.
33:02People with psychoses can construct their own reality
33:06unconnected to the outside world.
33:08So maybe our basic assumption is wrong,
33:13that this is a language that we can ever understand, comprehend and decode.
33:18So maybe for everybody else except of that person,
33:22it will never make any sense.
33:25So could it be the result of psychosis?
33:28Or could it simply be an ancient fraud?
33:31I don't think the Voynich manuscript was created ultimately to be understood,
33:37but to puzzle, to deceive, to fascinate,
33:42and perhaps to get a sack of gold from Rudolf II.
33:45Maybe the real secret of the Voynich manuscript
33:50is that it will always remain an unsolvable puzzle.
33:54I kind of love how it remains a mystery,
33:57and it remains something that we can continue to speculate
34:00because we don't know what it says.
34:02In 1966, the British Museum in London acquires one of its eeriest artifacts.
34:17It appears to be a very plain black disc.
34:21It's a great deal more than that.
34:23It is a macabre supernatural device
34:26whose origins have perplexed experts for centuries.
34:29This weird thing is encased in mystery.
34:33Nobody knew how it worked or where this came from.
34:38Now, using the latest graphics technology,
34:42we can shed new light on the obsidian mirror.
34:48Roughly 18 centimeters across,
34:51and around a centimeter and a half thick,
34:54it is made from a single slab of obsidian,
34:57a stone born in the heart of a volcano.
35:01It's a natural form of glass,
35:05but its very nature, it has this glassy black sheen to it.
35:12But in the mirror, these natural properties
35:15have been taken to unnatural extremes.
35:18It's clearly been very, very worked and polished into this final form,
35:23and it shines like a mirror.
35:25But this isn't a mirror intended for the human world.
35:29It has a much more macabre purpose.
35:32Now, new research can finally reveal the incredible origins of the obsidian mirror.
35:41So where does it come from?
35:45Who made it?
35:47What is it?
35:54When the British Museum acquired this object,
35:57it came with a little note that claimed this was the stone
36:01with which Dr. D called his spirits.
36:06There is only one famous Dr. D in history.
36:14John D.
36:16A shadowy, enigmatic figure from Tudor Britain 500 years ago.
36:21So who was Dr. D?
36:24Well, that's actually quite hard to pin down.
36:27He's quite a slippery character.
36:30Was he a magician?
36:32Was he a scientist?
36:34Was he a philosopher?
36:37Was he an astrologer?
36:39He sort of sat on the boundary
36:42between what we now think of as science
36:44and what we now think of as magic.
36:48D's reputation as a man of knowledge
36:50sees him rise to the position of astrologer
36:53and personal advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.
36:56She, on occasions, actually visited him in his house.
37:00They had consultations about the future,
37:03about the nature of the universe,
37:04about how she should run the country.
37:07This is a man who had his finger right in the middle
37:10of the political heart of the nation.
37:14A man with influence.
37:17But the volcanic mirror isn't part of his cultured life
37:21in the Elizabethan court.
37:23D believes he can use it to speak to the dead.
37:27Because he is an alchemist.
37:30Many of us think of alchemists as people
37:33who are trying to turn lead into gold.
37:34But actually, they were much more interested
37:37in finding something called the Philosopher's Stone.
37:42And what they meant by that
37:43was something that would prolong life
37:46and give you the answers to the meaning of life.
37:49So, in searching for this Philosopher's Stone,
37:53he became convinced that he could seek
37:56the assistance of angels.
37:58The obsidian mirror is central
38:01to this obsession with the occult.
38:04A note attached to its case claims D uses it
38:08for calling spirits.
38:10He is known to have attempted to raise spirits,
38:14to speak with them in a search for more knowledge,
38:17to try and speak with otherworldly beings.
38:21The obsidian mirror is D's supernatural gateway
38:24to the other side.
38:27In order to communicate with these angels,
38:30he began to use something that he called a scrying stone
38:33or a seeing stone.
38:34And it may well be that this object is that stone.
38:40So, it appears John D uses this object
38:43to summon spirits.
38:45And that's not as surprising as it sounds
38:47because this connection between mirrors and spirits
38:50is very old indeed.
38:53Looking into a glass or mirror
38:55in order to try and see something more
38:57is a very ancient idea.
39:00People have been doing it for a long time.
39:04More than 1,500 years before John D,
39:07the Celts in the British Isles
39:08are already using bronze mirrors and pools of water
39:11to connect with their gods and spirits.
39:15Could this ancient British mystical connection
39:17between spirits and mirrors explain why this strange
39:20obsidian object turns up in Tudor England?
39:25Unfortunately, there's one big problem with that theory.
39:27We don't have obsidian in the UK.
39:34There's a very small ancient volcanic rocks
39:37which have some glassy bits,
39:38but nothing that would give you such a beautiful object
39:41that we see in this mirror.
39:42So, it must have come from somewhere else.
39:44So, where on earth does it come from?
39:47And who made it?
39:49Whoever is responsible for this supernatural spirit mirror
39:56went to great lengths to craft it.
39:58It's been made out of one piece of obsidian,
40:01which is really quite hard to find
40:03because often it's fractured in many places.
40:05So, they must have really looked hard to find a natural example
40:08that they could work up into this wonderful mirror.
40:11But to produce this mirror-like finish
40:16out of rock as hard as obsidian
40:18would mean weeks of grinding and polishing by hand.
40:22It must have been something very special
40:24to the people that made it.
40:27For hundreds of years,
40:29the origin of the mirror remains a mystery.
40:32But in 2019,
40:35the University of Manchester in England
40:37analyzes the mirror's chemical fingerprint
40:39using a cutting-edge technique called X-ray fluorescence.
40:43Different magma bodies in different parts of the earth
40:46have different chemical fingerprints.
40:48And so, if you can analyze what the mirror is made up of
40:52and you can work out which volcano,
40:55which area they fingerprints to,
40:58bingo, you could find out where it came from.
41:01The results are astonishing.
41:04They trace the composition of this obsidian
41:09back to the jungles in the Sierra de las Navajas in Mexico.
41:13And there they found ancient quarries
41:16that had been worked for over 3,000 years
41:18where they were taking obsidian from a 2-million-year-old volcano.
41:21And that's the actual birthplace
41:23of this beautiful obsidian mirror.
41:26But this doesn't tell us when it was made.
41:30You can date the age of the rock that made the mirror,
41:34but it's actually impossible to date
41:36exactly when this mirror was manufactured by human hands.
41:39And so it could well have been hundreds of years old
41:41when Dr. D got his hands on it.
41:43It's difficult to know.
41:45So chemistry doesn't hold the answer.
41:48But maybe archaeology does.
41:51Over 700 years ago,
41:53when these quarries were being mined for obsidian,
41:56the area was ruled by the Aztecs.
42:02And the mirror fits into the Aztec story like a missing puzzle piece.
42:07Because the Aztec's religion is known to involve obsidian mirrors.
42:12In fact, the name of one of their gods is Tezcatlipoca,
42:17meaning smoking mirror.
42:19And he is shown in some images clutching an obsidian mirror.
42:24And this is where things get very strange.
42:28Because some Aztec rulers possessed a mirror known as a Tezcatl
42:33that they used to travel to the underworld and talk to the dead.
42:38Which is an astonishing coincidence,
42:41given that is exactly what John D uses it for.
42:47The mirror probably reaches D via the Spanish conquistadors,
42:51who invade Aztec Mexico in 1519
42:54and carry its treasures away to Europe.
42:57There's no real surprise that somebody like Dr. D might get his hands on it.
43:02It's going to be encased in mystery.
43:05And that's absolutely his bag.
43:07He is Mr. Mystery.
43:10This strange inky black object connects two different cultures,
43:14separated by thousands of kilometers of ocean.
43:18Both identified it as a supernatural doorway to the spirit world.
43:22Who knows?
43:24Maybe John D now sits on the other side of the mirror,
43:27next to its Aztec owners,
43:29looking out at us.
43:31at us.
43:32Ευχαριστώ.
44:02Υπότιτλοι AUTHORWAVE
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