Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: What's the oldest book?

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

In order to figure out what the oldest book is, one has to define what a book actually is. Listen in as we discuss this debatable topic. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry again,

sitting in for producer Dave C. And this is short stuff, as I've already said. That's right. And we're talking about books. What is a book? What is in a book? Old books. How old is that book in the window? Sure. The one with the waggity tail? That's right. Should we get going? I thought we already had, but yes, let's get going. So there's this book in the National Museum of History in Bulgaria. And it is what some people consider the oldest book in the world. Have you seen pictures of it? I have.

It's six pages of gold sheet, like the pages are gold and not like they took paper and put gold around it or the edges are gilded. It is like a sheet of gold metal and there's six pages like that. And they're bound together and it's written in Etruscan. And the Etruscans were the direct predecessors to the Romans. They kind of ran the area, I think their heyday was around 500 BCE. And they're kind of this mysterious group because we haven't deciphered their writing yet, but we know that this is an Etruscan book. And so a lot of people say, there you have it, everybody. The oldest book in the world is called the Gold Orphism Book. And this is it. Yes. It is actual multiple pages, like you said. It is bound. There are illustrations. There's a

mermaid and a harp and some soldiers and a horse rider. And, you know, they say this thing is 2,500 years old. They found it along a river, the Strauma River in southwestern Bulgaria in a tomb. It was donated. This is all kind of mysterious. It was donated by an anonymous person and then authenticated by two anonymous scientists. Yeah. A little sketchy. Sounds like aliens to me. But the debate then started. Well, that's not true. There's always been debates about what is the oldest this? What's the oldest that? What's the oldest book? And if you think about oldest book, it becomes a little bit of an esoteric question because you have to ask yourself, what is a book? Could it be a clay tablet or a scroll? Or, you know, can it be something that doesn't tell a story? It's just

like accounting records. So you really have to sort of define what a book is first. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of people would define a book by its physical attributes, right? Like, it's a certain shape. It's bound together. That's a big one for a lot of people. Some people say it has to be on paper, which would discount the gold orphism book. And then other people say, well, no, no, it's just got to like tell a story, say, and it can be on anything and it doesn't have to be bound together. And this is when everybody goes, oh boy, here we go. Right. Here comes another debate on what constitutes a book. Yeah, but it's not an angry debate, is it? No, it's not angry, but yet I'm angered by it because I think it's largely unnecessary.

And there is a person cited in this House of Works article who I suspect purposefully obfuscates this and initiates this debate because they don't want this question ever to be answered. Are you talking about Laurent Ferry? Yeah, this is a curator of rare books and manuscripts at Cornell and Cornell, and they were actually interviewed for this House of Works article about 11 years ago. And Cornell is in possession of these clay tablets that they maintain, the largest in the world, and they're pretty old. And some people might say, well, those are books, but most of those, like I said, about like tax records, their financial records, legal proceedings, they don't espouse any worldview. So I think they're in, that means they are not

books. Yeah, Laurent Ferry says a book would be something that has a binding and that espouses a worldview, right? So yeah, you can discount those clay tablets. They just don't, they don't count as a book, but the other people, they would count as a book. So they said, well, okay, Laurent Ferry, what is the oldest book then? And Ferry said either Homer's Iliad or the Epic of Gilgamesh. The problem is, and this is where I think Laurent Ferry is purposefully doing this, just to keep this debate going because they like to talk about this kind of stuff. So the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest is a very old book. The British Museum has one, but it's written on clay tablets from the 7th century BCE.

That didn't count. And yeah, it's not bound. So the very example that this curator gave as the oldest book doesn't even fall within their own parameters. And here's where I start to get angry. All right, well, let's take a break then before you hulk out and hulk smash. And we'll be right back to, well, we're not going to settle any debate, but we'll just talk about it more and make you more mad. I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boybander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and

pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get back to me getting mad.

Well, it depends on who you talk to. If you start bringing religion into it and all this stuff, then of course you're going to have people that say, you might have Christians that say, well, the Bible is clearly the oldest book because the world is only a few thousand years old and the Bible was written right after that. So what's older than that, Bub? Right, exactly. And biblical scholars and scientists will say, well, actually the Bible was written over many, many hundreds of years. And a lot of these stories that were written were hundreds of years after the events that they're talking about even. Right, but they don't say that to the people who say the world's a few thousand years old and the Bible was written right after. The scholars turn to the rest of us

and say, well, obviously these things were written over centuries after these events. So here's the thing. That's another thing that Lauren Ferry does is what about religion? Why would you bring that part into it? That's not fair. They're just trying to do this. And then there was another one too that they said too is, well, some books are not, it's not like the stories were created out of whole cloth right when the books were written. A lot of them are based on oral traditions. And these oral traditions far predate any of the books that are these oldest books that are written. And it does not matter. It does not matter if the book is a brand new story, but it's still older than any other book than a book that was published in the 50s based on an

oral tradition from 5000 years ago. That older book is going to be the older book. This Lauren Ferry person is really getting under my skin. Yeah, it can't be a book isn't a story. A book is a story that has been bound and written. And you know what, my definition, it doesn't have to be bound. If you give me a scroll that's got a good beginning, middle, and end to it, then that's a book. So there's papyri that are 4,500 years old that would qualify them because, I mean, it's a book, but it's just one long page. All right. That's a book. Okay. All right. To me. So we're hot on the trail here, at least as far as what you consider a book. I mean, Kerouac wrote on the rolls of toilet paper, right? He wrote on,

what's the rolls of toilet paper? I know it was a very long roll of paper over like 48 or 72 hours or something like that. And like that was the story in the book, but you can't sell stuff like that. So you have to bind them in the traditional form so you can put them on yourself. Exactly. But yeah, was it not a book before when it was just on one long scroll? It's a really great point. Now I'm just getting mad at us. No, not us. Ferry. Ferry. Lawrence Ferry. Be mad at them. All right. There's another question is what constitutes a book? What kind of book are you talking about? If you're talking about a printed book in the understanding of printing that we have here in the modern world, well, then that's easy to settle. The Gutenberg Bible or the book

printed right before the Gutenberg Bible. Man, I wish I would have looked it up. I just forgot about it. We did a whole episode on that. I know. But whatever book Gutenberg put out first, that would qualify. But then you remember in that episode, we talked about China had printers that they didn't use moveable type. They used woodblock printing, but they were still printing books. Those are books. Okay. But then other people say, well, before printing, before automatic printing, there was handwriting, but they were still writing books. Okay. Well, then now you're talking about manuscripts. So actually you come back to the biblical people and say, well, what you got? And they say, well, we have manuscripts that were written in the fourth century. That's pretty old,

isn't it? And you say, yeah, that's pretty old. But is it any more of a book than the Gold Orphism book? Right. I don't even know where we are now in this debate, to be honest, because I think I'm backing myself into a corner that I painted myself into. You can just walk right out of it. Just say this is what I now think. I think it can be handwritten. Okay. Because Jack Kerouac was writing with his hand. Okay. I think it can be on a scroll. Okay. Can't be an oral story. Okay. I agree. I'm going to say it doesn't have to be bound. If you want to sell it, it might have to be bound. But then you're getting into consumerism and that whole argument. But I think it has to be connected in some way. So if it's one long scroll, those pages are still

connected. Yeah. So what are you saying? If they slice that scroll up into 100 sheets and just stack them, that's not a book. Yeah. Because there's a Truscan gold sheets that are not connected that would not really qualify as a book like the Gold Orphism book, that are actually older than the Gold Orphism book. But they wouldn't count. They're just pages. You got pages, not a book. Pages are part of a book. All right. I guess it's here that I should reveal to the world that I am Laurent Ferry. Oh my gosh. He just ripped off his mask. And first he was Bob Uker, and then he was Laurent Ferry. Bob Uker. What was that from? I think that was sort of those Bud Light or the Miller wheat commercial, right? I thought it was like Naked Gun or something.

Go back and watch some of those sometime on YouTube. Those are fantastic. Yeah. They really, yeah. It was Miller, wasn't it? Yeah, Miller Light. Great bits of nostalgia. Wow. We were raised on TV, weren't we? Dang straight. Well, I'll tell you who was raised on books, Laurent Ferry. And you knew who was raised on radio? Journey. That's right. And how could you get any better as far as endings go than that, Chuck? Agreed. Well, everybody, short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.