The Borg cipher is thought to be around 400 years and contains a mixture of strange cipher symbols and some Latin script on its 408 pages.Credit: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Posted on 05/31/2026 8:40:14 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Deep in the archives of the Vatican library, a mysterious hand-written book, scrawled with strange symbols, had lain unread for more than 400 years. Its cryptic pages apparently concealed secret remedies "for affections of the human body", according to some text scratched inside the cover. Such healing practices were kept under wraps at the time since they could attract suspicion or even accusations of witchcraft.
Known as the Borg cipher, the 408-page-long manuscript is mostly incomprehensible -- coded using 34 obscure symbols with a few Roman letters and a front page written in Arabic. There was no known key to reveal what was encrypted. Some of the pages are also damaged due to their age, making the code even more challenging to read.
But with the help of machine learning -- a form of artificial intelligence -- researchers were able to unravel the code. They discovered the text was filled with thousands of bizarre treatments such as drinking several glasses of high-quality red wine or fermenting a nutmeg in some dough to combat dysentery...
According to some estimates, around 1% of the material in archives and libraries around the world is fully or partially encrypted. Some of the earliest known ciphers date back to Ancient Greece and Rome.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The Borg cipher is thought to be around 400 years and contains a mixture of strange cipher symbols and some Latin script on its 408 pages.Credit: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Many of those symbols are NOT obscure, they are symbols of planets and/or zodiac signs,
IN BEFORE THE OVALTINE CRAP..........
bizarre treatments such as drinking several glasses of high-quality red wine?
What’s ‘bizarre’ about that? I used to do it all the time!........
apparently knights fought a lot of giant killer snails.
With can openers...
Oh the horror!
That's precious. I've got a bootleg copy of the script in my pocketses.
Saturn: Lord of the Rings
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/saturn-lord-of-rings/
This is one of those movie tropes that I really wish would go away.
Everyone did "magic" or "charms". There was no prohibition on invoking the help of the saints, angels or any of the powers that were on the side of God. Even powers considered neutral such as the fay or woodland spirits were ok although considered risky to deal with. In fact you could get your local priest to come and help if you got in over your head.
What was prohibited was invoking demons or the devil or doing active harm.
Or just making stuff up ('spectral evidence') as an excuse to have the whole town kill a disliked neighbor.
Especially the one that would tell you that if you had actual faith that nothing of that nature could have done you any harm in the first place.
Reading manor court documents of that time are a real hoot. Lots of sleeping around, with child support orders being issued, lots of "he borrowed my tools and either broke them or did not give them back" and even more "He let's his animals run loose" And, of course, "Dad meant for ME to get the good bucket!"
Humans.
INDEED HE IS!🪐😮
Somthing just occurred to me.
Who has standing to “peer review” a paper written by AI?
If you swim far enough upstream, all AI at its roots has something written by a human. And all humans are prone to errors and subjectivity. And with all these AI discoveries we’re being deluged with, how many centuries will it take for humans to vet AI’s work to make sure that it wasn’t just making crap up all along?
Whoa there, that could undermine a lot of careers.
Lol!
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