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Star Charts From A Strange Book From The Past

Posted by timothy on from the perhaps-someone-is-laughing-at-us dept.

serutan writes: "Today there is a really unusual Astronomy Picture of the Day that talks about a centuries-old book, written in an unknown language that is undeciphered to this date. The 265-page book, with its curly script and weird illustrations, reminds me a lot of a bizarre modern book called the Codex Seraphinus, but for real. Any crypto experts care to take a whack at this?" Update: The image was transitioned and the entry can be found Here - cd

4 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. It is not so strange... by Dancing+Tree · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that no one has deciphered it yet if it is not in any language but is in someone's own personal code (which would then have to be deciphered into whatever their language was, living or dead, and then translated). What if the person who coded it couldn't spell? What if the book is a decoy or ruse written by someone to draw attention away from a truly important book that they possessed? Maybe it was made up by some shyster and sold to an unsuspecting scholar or emperor as a "lost" treatise on the stars that tells all if only *you* can figure it out. You don't need to know how to spell or even write to make up a book like that (in fact it probably helps if you can't do any of those things!) This doesn't mean that it isn't from the 15th century. There were just as many con artists then (if not more) as there are now.

    --
    :::Horrendous Experiences Make Amusing Anecdotes:::
    1. Re:It is not so strange... by gadfium · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, it almost certainly was written by someone in their own private language. The alternative is to assume that it was written by aliens, or something like that.

      The analyses of the text show that it seem to indicate that it is a real language, not just gibberish, since there is a detectable grammar (just not one we know) and vocabulary. There are more different words than one might expect from the languages of the time.

      I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a few spelling mistakes, since it was after all handwritten. The writing isn't always very readable either, but other than the language being unknown, it isn't deliberately encrypted.

      It seems unlikely to be a hoax, there's far too much work gone into it. It's probably the work of some unknown genius (or idiot savant).

      If we could translate it, it might have fascinating insights into the world of the time, novel mathematical and scientific ideas, or it might just contain his/her daily record of bowel movements.

      New Scientist had a feature on it a few months ago.

  2. SETI doesn't have a chance by dotslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This book has some interesting implications. If we can't decipher an annotated manuscript that is but a few hundred years removed from our time, how could we ever possibly hope to decipher a message form an alien race?

    1. Re:SETI doesn't have a chance by Yunzil · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The difference is, an alien race trying to communicate will deliberately try to make their message decipherable, whereas this manuscript might have been written in someone's personal code which was deliberately designed to be UNdecipherable.