15 Biggest Non-Mysterious Mysteries, Part I

Earlier this month while noodling around on the 'net, I ran across a video purporting to describe the "15 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in the World." "15 Mysteries that are yet to be solved or even understood" says narrator.

Sadly, the biggest mystery here was why the horned fellow on the cover picture isn't anywhere in the video. Instead, we're subjected, once again, to vague descriptions of omgcreepymysterious mysteries. And of course the first thing I thought was, "Wait, haven't I seen some of this debunked on the 'net?"

The Voynich Manuscript

According to the video, the manuscript was created in the early 1400s and that is in a language that no one has ever seen and that has not been deciphered. On the whole, that's actually true. However, one of the possible explanations given by the narrator is that "some propose the book to have alien origins." Because of course it's perfectly reasonable to explain anything unknown with aliens.

The video narrator also states that so far, "no one has had any luck" with deciphering this thing. That's not actually true. 

What we know about the manuscript is that the vellum it's printed on carbon dates to the 15th century and stylistic analysis of the illustrations dates to that same time. Ownership of the manuscript can be traced back to sometime in the 17th century. It's written in a language that we apparently have no other examples of, and the drawings include drawings of plants that do not appear to be any known plants. In fact, the only illustrations that are unambiguously recognizable are the signs of the Zodiac. (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0066344)

Some dismiss it as a hoax from beginning to end, with the hoax language created using a cardan grille. It may have been used as an alchemical herbal, a fake but impressive looking book that quack doctors would show off to clients who could't read.

Others, of course, want to believe that it's written in some kind of extraterrestrial alien language despite the fact that the figures in it are human.

Tiny naked women in bathtubs. Perhaps it's porn. Really, really esoteric porn.

And some breathlessly assert that the spiral patterns, like that of a galaxy (because only galaxies are shaped like spirals) proves some kind of alien origin.

The guy doing the real work on this thing, and by work I mean "science," asserts that the manuscript is not a hoax and that applied linguistic analysis has so far revealed translations for several words in the manuscript, and he hopes to decipher more via the same method. His thoughts on the manuscript's mysterious script involve it originating with a group of people who belonged to a culture that lacked a written form. They created a text borrowing from elements of other languages and cultures they'd run into to try to preserve their own knowledge about nature. During a time of upheaval in Europe, it's possible that this is the only record we have of this group and their language. While that's kind of sad, it's hardly mysterious, creepy, or aliens.

Green Children

There aren't any pictures of the Green Children, so here's a picture of the Green Cat of Bulgaria.

According to the video, two mysterious children appeared in a small village in England speaking an indecipherable language and having entirely green skin. They would eat only bean pods. They told of following a river of light to the sound of bells and waking near a village. The narrator goes on to say that "theories claim" that the children are from the "fabled" hollow earth, a parallel dimension, or victims of extraterrestrial abduction. As the Brits say, this is errant bollocks.

According to one of the source materials for this, William of Newburgh's Historia Rerum Anglicarum, in the 11th century during the reign of King Stephen, two children appeared appeared near the village called Woolpit. Their skin was green, their clothing strange, and they apparently did not speak the local language. The only food they would eat for months was beans (not the pods), until they "learned the use of bread."

After learning the local language and changing to a normal skin color once their diet became normal, they were baptized. The boy died, but the girl lived. She seemed to be fully human and normal, and when she grew up she married a local man. The children said they had followed the sound of church bells from a land of twilight that contained other Christians.

William of Newburgh, the chronicler here, had some good history in his Historia, but he also chronicled all sorts of hearsay, including this story and two stories about vampires. While he believed his sources to be reputable, he did not see the children or the vampires. It's possible that he and other, later chroniclers even farther away in time from these alleged events, were simply reporting current local urban legends.

It's also possible that the story is at least based on truth without making the children out to be faeries, aliens, or inhabitants of a hollow earth. The twelfth century was a time of horrific upheaval in England. According to William, the children appeared during the reign of King Stephen. King Stephen's reign was marked by civil war as he and Empress Matilda's forces fought over who would rule England. It's not unreasonable to hypothesize that two very young children got lost following their flocks and ended up malnourished and frightened in another village, perhaps in the aftermath of some kind of chaos brought on the by the civil war going on around them. Too young to know where they had come from, and possibly being too young to speak clearly, they were taken in by their new village.

There is also a condition known as green sickness in which a person becomes so anemic that his skin turns a greenish color. I couldn't find any pictures of people who were not the Wicked Witch of the West who had green skin, sadly, and the condition seems to have disappeared with modern life.

Rongorongo Tablets

In this segment, our intrepid narrator alleges that the Rapa Nui people lived over a thousand miles from society with absolutely no outside influences, and left behind a series of wooden tablets that are in an indecipherable language. Because of the island's isolation, this "known to be one of the earliest independently formed written languages ever witnessed." 

According to the British Museum, which has at least one of the tablets in their extensive collection, some scholars believe that the script on the tablets was developed after a Spanish visit to the islands in the 1700s. So, it's possible and even likely that these came about after an outside influences.

It's also possible that the Rapa Nui, the people of what we now call Easter Island, invented and used the script long before the 19th century, and the tablets were only found later, after the island's society and people were essentially destroyed both by internal factors and by the European slave trade. These people and this culture have had a really tough time not going extinct altogether. The tablets were carved out of natural materials like wood, which could rot or be burned, as well. The mystery here is not that no one knows how to read these things, the mystery is how these people and anything not made of stone from their early culture survived at all.

Not impressed by your ancient aliens. 

So I'm going to chalk this up to "we don't know how to read these and we may never know" rather than "mysterious mystery from the mists." I also think that anything Rapa Nui/Easter Island has been smeared with mystery forever because of the association that Von Daniken made between the Moai statues and alleged ancient aliens. 

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

Memorial for the dead hikers. The pass was named after the group leader after the incident.

In 1959, a group of nine young hikers went to an area the locals call "Dead Mountain" and were never seen alive again. That's not a horror movie, right? According to the video, they were climbing the mountain using a dangerous route and took a wrong turn. When a search team went looking for them, all that the searchers found were broken tents and dead bodies. The tents appeared to have been cut from the inside. The bodies were severely underdressed for the cold, some clad only in underwear and socks. Some were found in a ditch "wearing the clothes from the other bodies." There were "fractured skulls," and one had a missing tongue. "Nobody could ever explain what happened here."

As it happens, a number of people have attempted to explain what happened here, and the explanations range from the relatively logical (hypothermia makes people do weird things) to the downright ridiculous (Yetis! They were attacked by yetis!).

Let's begin with what we do know. The group left behind photographs and diaries that reconstruct what they did all the way up to whatever happened. They arrived at their final position on January 25th, They had expected to return by February 12th and when they did not appear by the 20th, their friends and relatives started asking that someone go look for them. The first bodies were found on February 26th, but all of them weren't found until sometime in May.

The medical examiner reported that the first five bodies found showed evidence of their cause of death being hypothermia. These were the bodies that were dressed in just their underwear and socks. The four who were found later and farther from camp showed evidence of serious traumatic injury, but they were also found at the bottom of a ravine. One of the bodies was missing the tongue.

Despite the many hysterical claims out there that something really weird happened to these folks, the most likely explanation appears to be that they were caught in an avalanche or they believed that they were going to be caught in an avalanche. If the tent was knocked over by moving snow, it could explain why they cut themselves free of the tent from the inside. It also explains why some of them were inadequately dressed because they left the tent in severe haste clad only in what they were wearing to sleep. Perhaps the ones closest to camp died quickly of hypothermia, and the rest fell off the ravine they fell into, which would explain the injuries and why they were better dressed, because they might have had time to get more clothes from the dead or from the camp, or from sharing out what clothes they had to try to give everyone enough to keep warm. It's also not particularly mysterious that a body found after months in a wooded area might have some damage due to decomposition or scavengers, so while the missing tongue is grotesque, it's not that weird.

We'll never really know, but if the simplest explanation is most likely to be the truth, then really, this can be explained fairly simply. It's really just a sad story with the moral that when you do dangerous things like hike in the Ural mountains in winter, bad things can happen to you.

The Immortal Count

"A man that kept showing up in history known to consort with some of Europe's famous figures like Casanova, Voltaire, Louis XV and George Washington. Some say that the Count was born in the early 1700s." The narration goes on to list an impressive series of alleged accomplishments and claims that the Count has even been seen in the 21st century.

The obvious problem here? The death of Count St. Germain, yes, that guy, the one with the many languages and the fantastical recipes for dying cloth (not hair, as the narration claims) and the one who wrote a great deal of music? Who wandered all over Europe impressing heads of state? There's a record of his death in 1784. He was staying at a friend's house when he died, the local church buried him and recorded his death and his burial site, and a final record of his personal effects. According to Wikipedia, the source of this information is the memoirs of the guy who owned the house where St. Germain died.

We do know that a man who called himself the Count St. Germain actually existed. He was reputed to be a spy, and he was involved in political maneuverings involving various European courts. He was reputed to be a con artist even at the time. He claimed to be immortal, and he claimed that he possessed alchemical secrets. However, he also once told Madame de Pompadour, "Sometimes I amuse myself not by making people believe but by letting them believe that I have lived in the most remote period."

As far as his rumored ageless appearance, contemporary sources vary. In 1774, he was described as appearing to be between 60 and 70 years old. In his final home, he appeared to have lost his fortune and to be suffering from rheumatism. Hardly something one would expect from someone who would never die and who was eternally young.

Once again, let's look at this with simplest and most likely explanation in mind. A man who called himself the Count St. Germain burst on the scene in Europe and convinced a lot of people, especially some wealthy and influential people, that he was immortal and ageless. He was likely extremely intelligent, amazingly talented, and possessed a truly rare gift for convincing people of things that they knew were not true because they wanted to believe. He was an extraordinary con artist, and a truly extraordinary person. But however extraordinary he was, what he is now is dead.