Posted on 02/10/2011 5:02:38 PM PST by decimon
While enthusiasts across the world pored over the Voynich manuscript, penned by an unknown author in a language no one understands, a research team at the University of Arizona solved one of its biggest mysteries: When was the book made?
University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript" – the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to this day.
Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA's department of physics has found the manuscript's parchment pages date back to the early 15th century, making the book a century older than scholars had previously thought.
This tome makes the "DaVinci Code" look downright lackluster: Rows of text scrawled on visibly aged parchment, flowing around intricately drawn illustrations depicting plants, astronomical charts and human figures bathing in – perhaps – the fountain of youth. At first glance, the "Voynich manuscript" appears to be not unlike any other antique work of writing and drawing.
An alien language
But a second, closer look reveals that nothing here is what it seems. Alien characters, some resembling Latin letters, others unlike anything used in any known language, are arranged into what appear to be words and sentences, except they don't resemble anything written – or read – by human beings.
Hodgins, an assistant research scientist and assistant professor in the UA's department of physics with a joint appointment at the UA's School of Anthropology, is fascinated with the manuscript.
"Is it a code, a cipher of some kind? People are doing statistical analysis of letter use and word use – the tools that have been used for code breaking. But they still haven't figured it out."
A chemist and archaeological scientist by training, Hodgins works for the NSF Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, or AMS, Laboratory, which is shared between physics and geosciences. His team was able to nail down the time when the Voynich manuscript was made.
Currently owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, the manuscript was discovered in the Villa Mondragone near Rome in 1912 by antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich while sifting through a chest of books offered for sale by the Society of Jesus. Voynich dedicated the remainder of his life to unveiling the mystery of the book's origin and deciphering its meanings. He died 18 years later, without having wrestled any its secrets from the book.
Fast-forward to 2009: In the basement underneath the UA's Physics and Atmospheric Sciences building, Hodgins and a crew of scientists, engineers and technicians stare at a computer monitor displaying graphs and lines. The humming sound of machinery fills the room and provides a backdrop drone for the rhythmic hissing of vacuum pumps.
Stainless steel pipes, alternating with heavy-bodied vacuum chambers, run along the walls.
This is the heart of the NSF-Arizona AMS Laboratory: an accelerator mass spectrometer capable of sniffing out traces of carbon-14 atoms that are present in samples, giving scientists clues about the age of those samples.
Radiocarbon dating: looking back in time
Carbon-14 is a rare form of carbon, a so-called radioisotope, that occurs naturally in the Earth's environment. In the natural environment, there is only one carbon-14 atom per trillion non-radioactive or "stable" carbon isotopes, mostly carbon-12, but with small amounts of carbon-13. Carbon-14 is found in the atmosphere within carbon dioxide gas.
Plants produce their tissues by taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and so accumulate carbon-14 during life. Animals in turn accumulate carbon-14 in their tissues by eating plants, or eating other organisms that consume plants.
When a plant or animal dies, the level of carbon-14 in it remains drops at a predictable rate, and so can be used to calculate the amount of time that has passed since death.
What is true of plants and animals is also true of products made from them. Because the parchment pages of the Voynich Manuscript were made from animal skin, they can be radiocarbon-dated.
Pointing to the front end of the mass spectrometer, Hodgins explains the principle behind it. A tiny sample of carbon extracted from the manuscript is introduced into the "ion source" of the mass spectrometer.
"This causes the atoms in the sample to be ionized," he explained, "meaning they now have an electric charge and can be propelled by electric and magnetic fields."
Ejected from the ion source, the carbon ions are formed into a beam that races through the instrument at a fraction of the speed of light. Focusing the beam with magnetic lenses and filters, the mass spectrometer then splits it up into several beams, each containing only one isotope species of a certain mass.
"Carbon-14 is heavier than the other carbon isotopes," Hodgins said. "This way, we can single out this isotope and determine how much of it is present in the sample. From that, we calculate its age."
Dissecting a century-old book
To obtain the sample from the manuscript, Hodgins traveled to Yale University, where conservators had previously identified pages that had not been rebound or repaired and were the best to sample.
"I sat down with the Voynich manuscript on a desk in front of me, and delicately dissected a piece of parchment from the edge of a page with a scalpel," Hodgins says.
He cut four samples from four pages, each measuring about 1 by 6 millimeters (ca. 1/16 by 1 inch) and brought them back to the laboratory in Tucson, where they were thoroughly cleaned.
"Because we were sampling from the page margins, we expected there are a lot of finger oils adsorbed over time," Hodgins explains. "Plus, if the book was re-bound at any point, the sampling spots on these pages may actually not have been on the edge but on the spine, meaning they may have had adhesives on them."
"The modern methods we use to date the material are so sensitive that traces of modern contamination would be enough to throw things off."
Next, the sample was combusted, stripping the material of any unwanted compounds and leaving behind only its carbon content as a small dusting of graphite at the bottom of the vial.
"In radiocarbon dating, there is this whole system of many people working at it," he said. "It takes many skills to produce a date. From start to finish, there is archaeological expertise; there is biochemical and chemical expertise; we need physicists, engineers and statisticians. It's one of the joys of working in this place that we all work together toward this common goal."
The UA's team was able to push back the presumed age of the Voynich manuscript by 100 years, a discovery that killed some of the previously held hypotheses about its origins and history.
Elsewhere, experts analyzed the inks and paints that makes up the manuscript's strange writings and images.
"It would be great if we could directly radiocarbon date the inks, but it is actually really difficult to do. First, they are on a surface only in trace amounts" Hodgins said. "The carbon content is usually extremely low. Moreover, sampling ink free of carbon from the parchment on which it sits is currently beyond our abilities. Finally, some inks are not carbon based, but are derived from ground minerals. They're inorganic, so they don't contain any carbon."
"It was found that the colors are consistent with the Renaissance palette – the colors that were available at the time. But it doesn't really tell us one way or the other, there is nothing suspicious there."
While Hodgins is quick to point out that anything beyond the dating aspect is outside his expertise, he admits he is just as fascinated with the book as everybody else who has tried to unveil its history and meaning.
"The text shows strange characteristics like repetitive word use or the exchange of one letter in a sequence," he says. "Oddities like that make it really hard to understand the meaning."
"There are types of ciphers that embed meaning within gibberish. So it is possible that most of it does mean nothing. There is an old cipher method where you have a sheet of paper with strategically placed holes in it. And when those holes are laid on top of the writing, you read the letters in those holes."
"Who knows what's being written about in this manuscript, but it appears to be dealing with a range of topics that might relate to alchemy. Secrecy is sometimes associated with alchemy, and so it would be consistent with that tradition if the knowledge contained in the book was encoded. What we have are the drawings. Just look at those drawings: Are they botanical? Are they marine organisms? Are they astrological? Nobody knows."
"I find this manuscript is absolutely fascinating as a window into a very interesting mind. Piecing these things together was fantastic. It's a great puzzle that no one has cracked, and who doesn't love a puzzle?"
###
High-resolution images of the manuscript's 240 pages, including a special section on highlights and special features, are online at http://voynichcentral.com/gallery
Me too. ;-)
Sorry, I didn’t even notice that there was ANY emoticon at all.
Of course, I’m also fresh from an incredible knock-down, drage-out on the Rel Forum with the kind of hypocritical obtuseness and blaming—the likes of which I’ve never seen before—even in that forum. Shocking. I’m still kind of stunned and not as perceptive as I should be.
Sorry.
You can still tell styles in many ways. That looks 15th century to me. It’s a good guess.
It looks like pollen to me.
There are fools, there are damned fools, and then there is me.
Gimme a hit of that orange sunshine purple doubledome LSD25 and I could figure it out.
I’m sorry if I was insulting. Didn’t mean to be.
As for the Rel Forum: When I was young I was told you never argue religion or politics in a bar. Seems to me that it’s futile to argue religion anywhere.
The last one I was on had comments like...
"God is love? He may be but I hate your effing guts and would choke you to death with my bare hands for telling me I am not filled with the Holy Spirit. I am so filled with the HS that I could lacerate your genitals with a butcher knife and leave only your foreskin in place...so don't tell me about love. I will pray for you, you stupid Mo Fo."
That’s easy. It matches one of my stargate maps.
Yeah, I was a bit reactionary coming from the fray as I was.
Sorry.
Certainly your stance is the more conventional fitting, proper stance in polite society. LOL.
However, given the times we live in . . . my own stance is . . . rightly or wrongly . . .
that some folks really desperately need a verbal 2 X 4 upside the head . . . the opportunities to wake-up are rapidly decreasing.
I realize mileage may vary.
And, it would be welcome if someone else would take my brief.
Until then, I will persist as a watchman on the wall and a fairly provocative poster trying to foster at least some thoughtful pondering on the part of many—particularly lurkers.
I have no delusions that those we contend with regularly on the Rel Forum will be influenced much by my humble words at all.
Fossilized concrete thinking rarely is—particularly about religious junk.
It’s a study of jellyfish?
I can’t say for certain.
It has been incredible the last several months.
One of the ‘traditionalist’ ancient . . . groups . . .
frequent posters . . . has been fiercely and relentlessly stalking, harshly accusatory etc. etc. etc. all TOTALLY UNTRUE of a dear motherly Proddy . . . and all out of his own fantasies. Evidently Because the motherly Proddy refused to flatter him with any straightforward response . . . on the matter . . . he became more and more shrill and more and more relentless in his stalking.
Then in the last 24 hours, he started accusing Proddys of doing THAT VERY THING HE’S BEEN THE MAIN TO SOLE PROPRIETOR OF!
INCREDIBLE!
The only thing I can point to with any confidence at all is that some statistics were posted—quite reliable and solid statistics from many research studies by Barna’s group—top flight survey folks—which documented that a MAJORITY of self proclaimed Roman Catholics in the USA
SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE THE BASICS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC DOGMA.In some cases, only 9% do. In others, 20 to 30 to 40 X percent do etc. Not very flattering.
All the worse given all the grand pronouncements over the years by the RC posters on FR. . . . about how they were homogeneously united in faith, doctrine and behavior—when they themselves have REPEATEDLY DEMONSTRATED THE OPPOSITE.
Anyway—after the stats were posted, they became decidedly nastier WITHOUT EVER RESPONDING AT ALL SPECIFICALLY, MUCH LESS HONORABLY to the stats. They just avoided them virtually entirely except for their standard seemingly compulsive habit of SHOOTING THE MESSENGER.
Soooooooooooo, it looks like, they have been taking so many hits on the field of contested ideas and theologies that they are merely circling their wagons and spewing increasingly levels of brazen blame, bile, and balderdash.
I don’t have any better explanation.
I suppose it could be increased somewhat by the general level of despair and hopelessness the world globalists and related situations and forces are assaulting all conservatives with. But that’s been there all along.
Things didn’t get SUPER NASTY until the stats were published.
And rather than deal with them honestly, the RC’s have just increased their habitual SHOOT THE MESSENGER tactics and become more personally assaultive of Proddys.
Sad, actually.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh welll . . . at least the lurkers have plenty of data on a regular basis from which to judge whether it is Biblical and wise—even safe and sane—to become an RC or stay an RC or not.
That’s about 98% of the reason I bother with such, at all.
bflr
Is that a tentacle tentative observation?
Pshaw! I used THIS DEVICE and put the translation HERE.
That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw it.
We’re all dating ourselves but that’s OK!
*sigh*
I was just looking at some places to go on a vacation mr. mm and I are taking in April and was,..... less than thrilled to see that we qualify for *senior* discounts at some places already.
I don’t FEEL that old.
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