600-year-old 'world's most mysterious text' finally decoded by UK genius

The Sun, via FoxNews.com/science ^ | May 15, 2019 | Sean Keach, Digital Technology and Science Editor | The Sun

[ETL]

A mysterious 600-year-old manuscript that has been deemed "unreadable" by the world's top cryptographers has finally been deciphered.

That's the claim by one Bristol academic who has cracked the legendary Voynich manuscript and revealed its secrets.

Dr. Gerard Cheshire believes that the document is written in a dead language called proto-Romance.

By studying the letter and symbols through the manuscript, he was able to decipher the meaning of the words.

According to the linguistics buff, the Voynich manuscript contains sex tips, info on parenting and psychology, and herbal remedies.

"I experienced a series of 'eureka' moments whilst deciphering the code, followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realized the magnitude of the achievement, both in terms of its linguistic importance and the revelations about the origin and content of the manuscript," Cheshire explained.

He said that his finding is "even more amazing than the myths and fantasies" typically associated with the Voynich manuscript.

These include previous theories that the documents contained prophecies about aliens.

According to Cheshire, the book was compiled by Dominican nuns as a source of reference for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon.

Maria was a great aunt to Catherine of Aragon, who was Queen of England from June 1509 until May 1533, as the first wife of King Henry VIII.

[ealgeone]

Drink more Ovaltine.

[SunkenCiv]

Voynich solvers get the same treatment as people who propose a solution to old serial killers' identities (Jack the Ripper, Black Dahlia, Zodiac) -- the reviewers of their work are always advocates of some other solution that hasn't got anything but a cult following. I tried to watch that Viper YT vid, it's AWFUL. The narrator flaps for almost five minutes before getting to the actual subject, and that's about the same time I lost patience. Some of the othe vids had those reprehensible and stupid robotic narrations. I haven't watched this one yet, but note that it is from 2017.

So much for that voynich manuscript "solution" | News Today | YouTube | Published on Sep 10, 2017

[SunkenCiv]

30 or so years ago the realtor I was working with at the time took me through a house, vacant, had been owned by the survivor of a couple who had started a successful local lumber company (still around today). Immaculate, but looked like it hadn't been updated in dacades. Upstairs (oddly, a storey and a half, so, those annoying slanted ceilings) there was an old fridge... hmm, this post epitomizes the irrelevant sidebar, but 'Civ is gonna plunge on... and it was pre-freon, used sulphur dioxide. Often I almost wished I'd have made the heirs an offer for the fridge. :^)

[SunkenCiv]

I concur.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3749612/posts?page=42#42

[PIF]

I had a kerosene fridge when I lived in the woods for 7 years - worked really well. Just light the wick and coolness follows - no worries about explosions or noxious gasses when I was gone fishing for days.

[Pontiac]

Typical Victorian icebox highboy model. The model is made out as a fine piece of oak furniture.

We had one of these in our basement when I was a kid. It had the lid on top for with the compartment for the block of ice

My grandfather as a young man delivered ice. He had stories that at many deliveries the customer would share a shot of whiskey with him so at the end of the day he would be pretty much in the bag.

The other story was that in the summer neighbor hood kids would be stealing slivers of ice out of his wagon while he was carrying ice into a house.

[sparklite2]

I lived in a place that had ice delivery for a while.
He’d give the kids ice slivers. He was later replaced
by an ice company called “Nisise,” pronounced ‘nice ice.’

My folks would occasionally have people over for a party.
One time, they put down corn starch onto the hardwood living room floor to make it easier to dance.

The next day, they noticed the corn starch had ground down all the softer pieces of the hardwood, leaving a floor that looked to have little honeycombs throughout. I think they carpeted over it.

[ETL]

As a teen I worked for a time for a company in Brooklyn that sold and delivered ice. For promotional purposes they had a beautifully restored 1929 Model-T Ford pickup truck with the company's name and logo on it. Having loved old American cars (restored, street rods and customs) since a little kid I particularly appreciated it.

One of my brothers owned a chopped and channeled '29 Model-A coupe. Preferring unmodified originals, he was and isn't too much into rods and customs, but he bought the car really cheap. It had needed too much work, and he so eventually sold it.

The old ice company trucked looked at lot like this one below.

[Jamestown1630]

I read that, too.

Maybe it’s just nonsense, and all those guys at NSA - among others - have just been wasting their time :-)

(I’ve always thought that the ‘message’ - if any - lies in the illustrations, not the ‘code’.)

[SunkenCiv]

Considering how many different deliveries there were in that era, it sounds like the whole darned neighborhood was half in the bag. :^)

[SunkenCiv]

Camper / motor home fridges at least used to run off bottle gas, which amused me in the 1970s, because I remember that Plato (in one of the dialogues) had made an analogy, "just as you can't get cold from heat...".

[Pontiac]

My grandparents’ refrigerator ran off of natural gas

Some Amish sects use natural gas or propane refrigerators.

Depending on the sect the refrigerator may be in the home or in an out building.

[Pontiac]

I remember that Plato (in one of the dialogues) had made an analogy, "just as you can't get cold from heat...".

The laws of thermodynamics say he is correct.

But I understand the humor.

[Jamestown1630]

That’s the same with telephones; a lot of them think that if the ‘phone isn’t really in the house, it’s not such an unacceptable distraction to the religious life.

(I don’t think many of the traditional Amish will be with us much past a generation or two. The younger, devout people want a more direct connection with their Lord, and the Evangelicals are garnering a lot of them.)