Please note that recent reports state that this document has just become partially deciphered - arclein.
This is a very promising insight. The manuscript is certainly a compendium on plants and from all appearances an excellent one as well. That the underlying language is indecipherable is certainly attributable to a clear non-European base. We can in fact take that as proven. We are then left with the question of just what else was possible.
This is a very promising insight. The manuscript is certainly a compendium on plants and from all appearances an excellent one as well. That the underlying language is indecipherable is certainly attributable to a clear non-European base. We can in fact take that as proven. We are then left with the question of just what else was possible.
There we have a
prospective scholar working during the early half of the sixteenth century. At that time, the Aztec world was overthrown,
but the totality of the collapse took much longer. Plenty of living Aztec scholars were
available and able to work as informants.
It made perfect sense to write their descriptions in Nahuatl. Thus we are dealing with an immediate
translation of the indigenous oral language into an European based alphabet.
This is a pretty
good code so long as no one knows the underlying language.
Has the Voynich
manuscript been decoded? Mysterious 15th century text may be written in a lost
AZTEC language
The Voynich
manuscript was discovered in an Italian monastery in 1912
Due to its location,
historians think the manuscript was written in Europe
It is full of
illustrations, diagrams and a mysterious text written left to right
Cryptographers
have been trying to decipher this text for decades
Botanist now
claims the plants in the book come from Mexico
This suggests
the book may be written in an Aztec language called Nahuatl
PUBLISHED: 12:46 GMT, 4 February 2014 | UPDATED: 14:03
GMT, 4 February 2014
For decades, researchers have been trying in vain to
decipher ancient texts written on the Voynich manuscript - yet they may have
been looking for inspiration in the wrong place.
A U.S. botanist studied illustrations of the plants
throughout the 15th century book and pinpointed a number of them to the Central
American region now known as Mexico.
Dr. Arthur Tucker claims at least 37 of the 303 plants
would have grown in the region during the 15th and 16th century and believes
the text is, therefore, written in the Aztec language of Nahuatl.
Nahuatl originated in Central Mexico during the 7th
century. It was the spoken predominantly by the Aztecs.
Following the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 16th
century, the alphabet was replaced with Latin.
Nahuatl became a literary language, used in poetry
and passages, similar to the Voynich manuscript.
Varieties of Nahuatl are still spoken by approximately
1.5 million Nahua people in Central Mexico.
The writing is so bizarre, sceptics have stated the
book is a hoax or that the writing is nonsense.
The Voynich manuscript was discovered in an Italian
monastery in 1912 by book dealer Wilfred Voynich.
Carbon dating suggests the manuscript was created
between approximately 1404 and 1438, during the Italian Renaissance.
The 240 pages of the book are made from a type of
parchment produced using calf skin, known as vellum, and are decorated with
illustrations, diagrams and a mysterious text written from left to right.
Examples include the illustration of the Ipomoea
murucoides, top left, taken from the Mexican Codex Cruz-Badianus which has an
identical style to the Ipomoea arborescens in the manuscript, bottom left. A
Voynich illustration of a cactus pad or fruit, right, is shown near the name
‘nashtli’, which Dr. Tucker and Talbert claim is a variant of the word
‘nochtil’ - the Nahuatl name for the fruit of the prickly pear
If the text, pictured far left, is written in the
language of Nahuatl, the botanists claim they can find the
name of the plants in the manuscript. From this, cryptographers may be able to
form a basic code from which to crack the rest of the text in the 15th century
book
The Voynich manuscript, pictured, was discovered in
an Italian monastery in 1912 by book dealer Wilfred Voynich. Carbon dating
suggests it was created between 1404 and 1438. The 240 pages of the book are
made from a type of parchment produced using calf skin, known as vellum
Due to its mysterious nature, the text has been
studied by cryptographers around the world, yet no-one has succeeded in
deciphering the reams of written passages.
Dr. Arthur Tucker from Delaware University took a
different approach, and instead, studied the plants depicted throughout the
book.
He discovered similarities between specific plants
in the manuscript and illustrations of plants he had spotted in his collection
of 16th century Mexican records.
THE MYSTERY AND SCEPTICISM SURROUNDING THE VOYNICH
MANUSCRIPT
The Voynich manuscript was discovered in an Italian
monastery in 1912 by book dealer Wilfred Voynich.
Carbon dating suggests the manuscript was created in
the early 15th century, between approximately 1404 and 1438, during the Italian
Renaissance.
The 240 pages of the book are made from a type of
parchment produced using calf skin, known as vellum.
Each page is decorated with illustrations, diagrams
and a mysterious text written from left to right.
Due to its mysterious nature, the text has been
studied by cryptographers around the world, yet no-one has succeeded in
deciphering the reams of written passages.
This has led to many people claim the book is hoax,
or that the writing is nonsense.
Due to the manuscript’s discovery in Italy, many
researchers believe the book to have originated in Europe, however, the latest
research from Dr. Tucker suggests it may have been written by the Aztecs in
what is now modern-day Mexico.
For example, Dr. Tucker and fellow researcher
Rexford Talbert said one plant in the book bears a resemblance to the picture
of a soap plant (xiuhamolli) seen in a Mexican codex from 1552.
While another example includes the illustration of
the Ipomoea murucoides, taken from the Mexican Codex Cruz-Badianus, which has
an identical style to the Ipomoea arborescens in the manuscript.
In total, the researchers linked 37 of the 303
plants in the manuscript to illustrations in ancient Mexican books covering
botany across Texas, California and Nicaragua.
If the text is written in the language of Nahuatl,
the botanists claim they can find the name of the plants in the manuscript and
may be able to use these to form a basic code from which to crack the rest of
the text.
For example, a Voynich illustration of a cactus pad
or fruit is shown near the name ‘nashtli’, which Tucker and Talbert claim is a
variant of the word ‘nochtil’ - the Nahuatl name for the fruit of the prickly
pear.
Nahuatl originated in Central Mexico during the 7th
century. It was the spoken predominantly by the Aztecs.
Following the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 16th
century, the alphabet was replaced with Latin.
Nahuatl became a literary language, used in poetry
and passages, similar to the Voynich manuscript.
Varieties of Nahuatl are still spoken by
approximately 1.5 million Nahua people in Central Mexico.
Users can browse a high-resolution version of the
Voynich manuscript online at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Mexican plants
could break code on gibberish manuscript
17:03 03 February 2014 by Lisa Grossman
A mysterious manuscript that appears to be written
in gibberish may actually be in an extinct dialect of the Mexican language
Nahuatl. Illustrations of plants in the manuscript have been linked to plants
native to Central America for the first time, suggesting a new origin for the
text. But some still say it could be a hoax.
The
Voynich manuscript has puzzled researchers since book dealer Wilfrid
Voynich found it in an Italian monastery in 1912. Among hundreds of pages of
so-far undecipherable text, it includes
illustrations of naked nymphs, astrological diagrams and drawings of plants that
no one has been able to identify.
An academic war has raged for years between those
who think the manuscript contains a real language that could eventually be
decoded, and those who think it was a clever forgery designed to dupe book
collectors. "It's a battle with two sides," says Alain Touwaide,
a historian of botany at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.
Mexican look
Previously, many researchers assumed that the
manuscript must have originated in Europe, where it was found. But botanist Arthur Tucker of Delaware
State University in Dover noticed similarities between certain plants in the
manuscript and illustrations of plants in 16th century records from Mexico.
Tucker began collecting copies of Mexican botanical
books out of curiosity about the history of herbs there. "Quite by
accident, I ran across the Voynich and it was a Homer Simpson moment of D'oh!
Of course –this matches my other codices and the artwork of 16th century
Mexico."
The most striking example was an illustration of a
soap plant (xiuhamolli) in a Mexican book dated 1552. Tucker and Rexford
Talbert, a retired information technology researcher at the US Department of
Defense and NASA, connected a total of 37 of the 303 plants, six animals and
one mineral illustrated in the Voynich manuscript to 16th century species in
the region that lies between Texas, California and Nicaragua. They think many
of the plants could have come from what is now central Mexico.
On the basis of these similarities, the pair
suggests that the manuscript came from the New World, and that it might be
written in an extinct form of the Mexican language Nahuatl. Deciphering the
names of these plants could therefore help crack the Voynich code.
Plant forgery
Gordon Rugg of
Keele University in the UK remains sceptical. He thinks a careful forger could
have made up plausible-looking plants.
"It's pretty good odds that you'll find plants
in the world that happen to look like the Voynich manuscript just by
chance," he says. "If I sat down with a random plant generator software
and got it to generate 50 completely fictitious plants, I'm pretty sure I could
find 20 real plants that happen to look like 20 of the made up plants."
Touwaide says the findings are intriguing, but
agrees that they form just one of many hypotheses. "I believe that it
doesn't prove anything. If it's a forgery, someone could very well have had the
idea of creating the forgery on the basis of New World flora. At the most, it
shows a possible source of the forgery."
Tucker admits that there is work to be done before
they can throw out the hoax hypothesis entirely. But one of the Voynich plants
makes him wonder: it looks strikingly similar to Viola bicolor, the
American field pansy, which only grows in North America. The distinction
between this plant and its European relative, Viola tricolor, was not
known until after the Voynich was discovered. Ruling out time travel, says
Tucker, how would this have been possible? "If this is a hoax, they did a dang
good job and had help from a competent botanist who had knowledge only
available after 1912 in some crucial cases."
Journal reference: HerbalGram
No comments:
Post a Comment