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"If it was a hoax, then we have to invoke Jules Verne and his time machine." I wonder if he meant H.G. Wells, or if that was a reference to Back to the Future
by drivers99 13y ago
"If it was a hoax, then we have to invoke Jules Verne and his time machine."
I wonder if he meant H.G. Wells, or if that was a reference to Back to the Future III.
- lotharbot 13y agoEither way, I enjoyed the underlying sentiment: when you're trying to analyze text from documents of uncertain origin, one of the most powerful tools is to look for information that would be known to someone living in a particular place and time, but that wouldn't have been known to "outsiders" (ie, forgers) until after the manuscript was discovered. For example, if you find that a manuscript discovered in the early 1900s uses the right statistical distribution of names from a particular area in the 1600s, and that name distribution was determined from more recent archaeological finds, that suggests the document was written by someone from that time and place.
- judk 13y agoThat's like a message with a cryptographic signatures carved into the fabric of our planet. Awesome.