Redpill me on the Voynich Manuscript, /his/.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/esp_ciencia_manuscrito07.htm
Scribe invented his own language in order to keep his texts private and secure. Was a common thing to do back then when there were no such things as encrypted computer files and passwords.
/threads
Its nonescence intentionally constructed to be mysterious.
>>818006
first world builder and con-langer
>>818006
It was a prank bro
>>818298
Actually no the leather from which the manuscript has been made of, has been carbondated to the early 1400s. The book probably was written in code in order to keep the contents of the book a secrecy. Writting in secret languages/letters was in fact a very common practice among alchemists at the time.
>>818910
re-used parchment was very, very common. I could take a book from 1700 and bleach/scrape the pages and write something new, but that doesn't mean I wrote it in 1700.
I studied art history and did a research fellowship at the Newbury Library in Chicago, looked at TONS of manuscripts from 1200-1400. Voynich is fake as shit.
>>819027
Just why would semeone fake a sensational mystical book, and then not claim money for discovering it.
>>819035
It *was* sold for lots of $$$ when it was "discovered".
>>819035
Becouse it would be fail, since it contains nothing?
>>819055
came here to post this
This site does a very good job of going over all the details of the voynich manuscript, and covers just about every theory out there - including some of the less likely ones.
http://www.ciphermysteries.com/the-voynich-manuscript
>>819027
But the pigments used are also dated to the early 1400s
There are also many stylistic details that seem to point to it being created between 1400 and 1500.
There are also records from the 1600s that seem to refer to the voynich manuscript.
Beyond that it is almost certainly some type of cipher/encryption going on.
>>819045
No it wasn't
>>819218
Emperor Rudolph the 2nd paid some serious coin for it, actually.
I'm not saying it's a recent fake. Even if it was made in the 1400's, that doesn't default mean it's some esoteric gold mine of secret knowledge. Maybe some really bored monk was just fucking around. There's nothing in the illustrations that actually point to some secret knowledge. They *look* mysterious to us now, and maybe to people in the 1600's as well, but that doesn't mean anything. As for the encryption, all signs point to it being gibberish. I could come up with a bunch of "letters" and pretend to write a text, and for all appearances it would *look* like a language, but absolutely would not be.
The drawings are actually really shitty, even for that time period, and pretty clearly weren't drawn from life. They appear to be someone mashing up different plants they'd seen or heard about to make "weird" things.
Here's a pic of a 1400's botanical text for comparison. Voynich was done by a rank amateur, probably a bored dude with some familiarity with botanical and astrological texts, for no other reason than to make some weird shit. People do that all the time.
>>819285
Oh, I misread you. I used to think it was probably a fake made during the 1400/1500s too since that was hardly unheard of, but
>As for the encryption, all signs point to it being gibberish.
This is where I'm a bit out of my element, but lots of cryptographers have looked at the manuscript and found features that indicate its some sort of code. There are lots of things that pop up in the text through statistical analysis that shouldn't be there if its just made up, glossolalia or even a simple cipher.
http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2016/01/21/voynich-statistics-and-why-voynichese-is-not-flat
Now this doesn't mean its not a fake. It could be some scribe making up a funny way of enciphering text and just encoding another text or even his random ass collection of shower thoughts/memes.
>>819429
Yeah, i was really into this for a few weeks.
These are the most likely scenarios as I see it:
1: It's a modern fake
2: It's a 16th/17th century fake
3: It's some 15th century basement dwelling autist's obsessive pet project, but doesn't have any real meaning.
4: It's a genuine coded manuscript containing forgotten or hidden knowledge, with no known counterpart or traceable history
When put like that, #4 is really the least likely.
#1 is out because of the actual historical evidence of it changing hands in the 16th century.
#2 is still pretty likely.
#3 is my personal choice. Being an artist, I know how much fun it is to just make weird shit. I could *absolutely* see myself being bored off my ass at some central european monastery, copying manuscripts till my fingers bleed, and wanting to do something cool. Or maybe I'm an amateur alchemist who gets no respect from my peers (because honestly I'm not very good and not as well uneducated as them) so I make up this bonkers book for the lulz. Lulz did not start with the internet, lulz have been around since the dawn of humanity.
The script does bare a superficial resemblance to some Western Chinese scripts from the early middle ages and some South Asian scripts. If I were to go with #4, I would say it was by an individual who was from what is now Western China/Xinjiang region- but came to Europe in his late teens- early twenties. The script is an approximation of what he learned when he was young, so it's not perfect. The drawings are from what he remembers from his early education, same with the astrological stuff. He made the manuscript when he was in his 40s, perhaps. By that time he was well versed in European manuscript arts, but not in a "native" way, which is why Voynich looks a little weird.
The script in the Voynich superficially resembles Tocharian or other related languages, but they would have been extinct by the time the Voynich was written. Presumably.
>>819530
If only you would use your powers for good.
>>819536
Eh, I tried for a while. Got bored. Now I just map the war in Ukraine and make sculptures out of blown up cars. Such is life in the zone.
>>819530
There are also latin/alchemical abbreviations from folios in the 1400s that have a striking resemblance to voynich, and I think that is the most likely origin of the symbols in the vm.
you might find this site interesting, its basically your option #3 but done by computer scientist and linguists
http://forgottenlanguages-full.forgottenlanguages.org/
Unfortunately most of the actual info on their site has been taken down
>>819824
Hm interesting, thanks for this.
>>818006
>Tfw I'm from argentina and remember a plant like that precisely
Did you call me?
