Diatoms
Posted on 02/12/2011 2:01:35 PM PST by FTJM
Part of the mystery behind an 'alien' book no one can read has at last been unraveled.
Found in a chest of books outside Rome by a dealer in antique books, the Voynich manuscript is among literature's great mysteries. The book of aging parchment is written in alien characters, some resembling Latin letters, others unlike anything used in any known language, and arranged into what appear to be words and sentences -- except they don't resemble anything written or read by human beings.
And for decades, the manuscript has mystified scientists.
"Is it a code, a cipher of some kind?" asked Greg Hodgins, a physicist with the University of Arizona. "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," Hodgins said.
The DaVinci Code was fiction. The Voynich manuscript is real -- and its code remains one of history's biggest mysteries. But at least Hodgins has solved part of the mystery behind the book: it's age.
Because the parchment pages of the Voynich manuscript were made from animal skin, they can be radiocarbon-dated. Hodgins, a chemist and archaeological scientist, used radiocarbon dating on tiny bits of the pages extracted with a scalpel to determine that the book dates back to the early 15th century, making it a century older than scholars had previously thought.
Carbon-14 dating places the book's creation to between 1404 and 1438, in the early Renaissance. It's not the oldest book in the world -- that would be The Diamond Sutra, a seven-page scroll printed with wood blocks on paper in China around 1,300 years ago. But it's older than the Gutenberg bible, the first book printed with modern presses, which rolled off the line in 1453.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
There is more information here. http://www.isi.edu/natural-language/people/voynich.pdf This is one of those “search for the holy grail” type things. It’s a really cool mystery.
Diatoms
Very good neighborhood at the time I assure you.
He had money to burn~
Ebonics?
Btt for later
Or just some merchant’s in house code and inventories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHj7bH4yHbg
It's just become the rage again...
It's not that easy; first he'd need to invent a completely new alphabet; then he'd need to invent a language that is written in that alphabet, with grammar and other rules. Only then one can "write" something that convincingly resembles a text.
There is another catch. If he is caught with this book, the Inquisition would ask him, quite insistently, to reveal the language, so that they can translate it and see in what exactly words he is expressing his love for the Devil. The inquisitors wouldn't take "no" for an answer, and they wouldn't believe that the book is a prank. In their opinion (quite justified, IMO) very few people would go to such a great length to make a practical joke.
to impress the ladies who listened to his fanciful tales about what he had drawn and written in the book. It is very likely none of them could read anyway.
As I understand, ladies 500 years ago weren't too demanding. Besides, they'd be bored by the book in an instant - like if I give you a large crystal of salt and start blabbing for hours about its physical properties and X-ray crystallography (especially if we both know nothing about that.) A book would be of no interest to illiterate ladies, beyond a few pictures - and there aren't too many, and majority of them are [unknown] plants.
One theory is that the book was made as a con job, to be sold to a collector for good money. The text then is indeed meaningless, but some effort was put into making a language.
the notebooks of a doctor/scientist ? who would have had to keep a low profile on his studies in those days - or face the Inquisition? - if in a Catholic ruled country. Otherwise, the above without fear of the powers that be.
Just a research scientist of his day?
The manuscript is too "clean" for it to be a lab journal. There are no corrections, but a scientist wouldn't discard a spoiled page just because of a typo. There are no notes on margins, and those would be very natural when the scientist reviews his notebooks and thinks of something. The manuscript is also split into several chapters, and there is no empty space between them. A scientist would be unlikely to do a study of plants and completely finish it, then switch to something else and be done with it, and so on. A scientist would keep several notebooks, one per study. This looks like a specially arranged material, written for other people to read.
It’s ancient astronaut theorists at it again. The History Channel puts all it’s academic authority on the line here. Star people stopped here to use the bathroom once during a long intergalacic trip. They left their travel documents behind at this church, which had a nice bathroom for public usage.
It’s ancient astronaut theorists at it again. The History Channel puts all it’s academic authority on the line here. Star people stopped here to use the bathroom once during a long intergalacic trip. They left their travel documents behind at this church, which had a nice bathroom for public usage.
It’s ancient astronaut theorists at it again. The History Channel puts all it’s academic authority on the line here. Star people stopped here to use the bathroom once during a long intergalacic trip. They left their travel documents behind at this church, which had a nice bathroom for public usage.
Something like that I think. Tolkein was a linguist who could and did invent new languages out of nothing. Not the first that could do it, I’m sure. Would be a nice way of keeping prying eyes from discovering what was in your papers.
that would've put Leonardo at minus 18 years to plus 14.
I know just about everything under the sun that can't be pinned down is credited to him, even the creation of THe Shroud - which is known to have existed several hundred years before Leonardo was born -
He WAS a genius. But he had limits, one being that he had to be alive to do ANYthing. I 'assure you" ;o)
So he was about 14 at the outside date of the creation of this book - but he was pretty busy apprenticing at the time. Probably not enough time and privacy to spend the time required for these extensive observations.
As an artist/writer, I wouldn't use my first drafts and sketches in my final work - I get them worked out, notes, scratch-outs, additions, etc and THEN put them to the final work.
Certainly, many ancient manuscripts exist as final, edited 'editions sans notes, corrections - n'est-ce pas?
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