Another Possible Voynich Breakthrough

bmearns writes "Over the past few weeks we've been hearing a lot about a possible breakthrough in decoding the infamous Voynich manuscript, made by a team of botanists who suggested that the plants depicted in the manuscript may have been from the New World and the mysterious writing could be a form of an Aztec language. But the latest development comes from linguist Stephen Bax, of Bedfordshire University, who believes he has identified some proper names (including of the constellation 'Taurus') in the manuscript and is using these as a crib to begin deciphering the rest of the text, which he believes comes from the near east or Asia."

Comments

EUREKA!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It says "Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine"...

in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...yet another researcher reports their findings that one of the Rorschach inkblots may definitely be a picture of a face...

finally

[slashmydots]

Anyone else get the feeling that this is pretty much the only ongoing legendary Discovery Channel special mystery that actually got solved. Atlantis? Who knows? Stone henge? Not really solved. Nostradamus? Super debatable. But finally, what seems like yet another impossible eternal mystery is FINALLY being solved! And in my lifetime! I can't even think of any other comparison similar to this.

Re:finally

[Baloroth]

Atlantis was solved over 2000 years ago: Plato made the story up. He says as much. It was never intended to be taken as an actual real place, it was just a story told by a fictional character in one of his dialogs (the Timaeus, to be specific) to make a point.

No progress at all...

[evilviper]

This guy just looked at the pictures, found a few he thinks he knows, and assumed the text with some similarity MUST BE IT.

"He said he had managed to find the word for Taurus, alongside a picture of seven stars (seen as part of the zodiac constellation of Taurus)"

Up next he'll find the word "leaf" next to a picture of a leaf, and the word "copyright" on the last page...

Re:No progress at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that in the languages families this is puported to be from, that's normal patterning of a aggulnative language; heavy on prefixes, and repetition (both word and morpheme level) This is compounded by the fact many of the languages are few on morphemes.

"fachys.ykal.ar.ataiin.Shol.Shory.cThres.y,kor.Sholdysory.cKhar.or,y.kair.chtaiin.Shar.are.cThar.cThar,dansyaiir.Sheky.or.ykaiin.Shod.cThoary.cThes.daraiin.sa o'oiin.oteey.oteos,roloty" -- Beginning of First page of the voynich transcript using latin characters. -- Looks like a language to me.

I personally love http://my.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%80%A1%E1%80%9B%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA This example for a language that is nothing but repeated circles.

"A koi aku la lakou ia ia a hilahila oia, i mai la ia, E hoouna aku oukou. A hoouna aku la lakou i kanalima kanaka; a imi lakou ia ia i na la ekolu, aole i loaa. A hoi hou mai la lakou ia ia, (no ka mea, e noho ana no ia ma Ieriko,) i aku la ia ia lakou, Aole anei au i olelo aku ia oukou, Mai hele oukou?" (Old Testament)

"oka maeuhane e nana ana oe maloko oka abenana ma kahi mamao he hoailona laki ia no ka hoomahuahua ana aku i kona ma pomaikai.
ina he kanaka mahiai e holopono ana kana mau mea kanu ina he kanaka ma ka oihana e pii ana kana ma hana ina he kanaka ilihune mahuahua ana kana mau keiki a pelaaku." (Newspaper)

"Aymar aruxa arsuta aru, qillqata aruwa. Jichhurunakanxa waranqh waranqh aymaranakarakiw uraqpachan mirantatasipki, janiw Los Andes ukawjanakt utjki aymaranakaxa."

Or look at http://dv.wikipedia.org/wiki/%DE%89%DE%A6%DE%87%DE%A8_%DE%9E%DE%A6%DE%8A%DE%B0%DE%99%DE%A7 For an example of repeated glyphs over, and over again.

Or even inuktitut article for the eye: http://iu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%90%83%E1%94%A8
Seeng repeated glyphs over and over, looks like complete gibberish, or variants that aren't significant, actually are. dot over the i or no? significant in Turkish. i, j, originally just a cursive swish to differentiate i at end of word from a trailing tail.

full/original poublicaiton:

[bammmmm]

http://cms.herbalgram.org/herb...

Schizophrenia

[sg_oneill]

When I was younger, early 20s back in the 1990s , once of my best friends started to slip into schizophrenia (it ran in his family). He constantly jotted drawings and writings on paper, which grew increasingly more bizare. Started with pictures of aliens and UFOs (Which he'd say where just him having fun) but over time turned into numerological type things (My first letter is T my second is C, I am top cat, my age adds up to 9 which upside down is a third of 666 etc etc etc) and increasingly more paranoid mystery theories. He'd draw charts explaining the relationships between things.

And since he was a biology student, he drew lots of plants. Particularly his favorite, marihuana.

Whats to say this isn't the mad scrawlings of a schizophrenic mad man, 500 years ago? It'd certainly fit the pattern.

Re:Schizophrenia

[chihowa]

Length and coherency don't preclude madness. One of my father's patients claimed to visit another world frequently and wrote a very long book detailing the world and its inhabitants. I have a huge map he drew of the place with detail so fine you need a magnifying glass to read it all and plates of the (not surprisingly) bizarre animals that lived there. The whole thing is incredibly detailed and quite internally consistent. Schizophrenia is not orthogonal to intelligence.

There's also work like Henry Darger's, which is extremely lengthy and follows a coherent theme.

Re:Schizophrenia

[infogulch]

Schizophrenia is not orthogonal to intelligence.

Surely you meant "schizophrenia is orthogonal to intelligence", otherwise you're saying that all schizophrenics are geniuses.

Simpler answer: It was a con

[Calavar]

I remember reading an article long ago that said that the Voynich manuscript was made by a con man that wanted to make some quick cash by writing down some gibberish in a book, claiming that it had mystical origins, and selling it off to someone with more money than common sense. (In this case, that person would be Emperor Rudolf II.) Some linguists have said that the statistical patterns of the text match what would be expected of a natural language, but the article that I read suggested that it is possible to create a random text that looks like a natural language by randomly choosing syllables with a special table. This table of syllables is constructed in such a way that the probability of a certain syllable occurring depends on the syllable that precedes it. To me, this seems like a much more reasonable explanation than the idea that New World lanuages somehow made it into a book that was (according to Wikipedia) was written in Europe between 1404 and 1438.

Re:Simpler answer: It was a con

[plasticsquirrel]

You may want to read the article before jumping to conclusions. The authors have identified many of the plants and animals as those of the New World, including specific breeds of cattle introduced from Spain, animals like the Ocelot, and others. Their study is very thorough, and it includes study of texts they have found with similar scripts and languages. Their conclusion is that it came from 16th century Spain, and was written in an Aztec language by natives who had been educated by the Spanish (and their evidence for this is quite convincing). From the conclusion of the research:

We note that the style of the drawings in the Voynich Ms. is similar to 16th century codices from Mexico (e.g., Codex Cruz-Badianus). With this prompt, we have identified a total of 37 of the 303 plants illustrated in the Voynich Ms. (roughly 12.5% of the total), the six principal animals, and the single illustrated mineral. The primary geographical distribution of these materials, identified so far, is from Texas, west to California, south to Nicaragua, pointing to a botanic garden in central Mexico, quite possibly Huaztepec (Morelos). A search of surviving codices and manuscripts from Nueva España in the 16th century, reveals the calligraphy of the Voynich Ms. to be similar to the Codex Osuna (1563-1566, Mexico City). Loan-words for the plant and animal names have been identified from Classical Nahuatl, Spanish, Taino, and Mixtec. The main text, however, seems to be in an extinct dialect of Nahuatl from central Mexico, possibly Morelos or Puebla.

Re:Simpler answer: It was a con

[mbone]

You may want to read the article before jumping to conclusions. The authors have identified many of the plants and animals as those of the New World, including specific breeds of cattle introduced from Spain, animals like the Ocelot, and others. Their study is very thorough, and it includes study of texts they have found with similar scripts and languages. Their conclusion is that it came from 16th century Spain, and was written in an Aztec language by natives who had been educated by the Spanish (and their evidence for this is quite convincing).

Read this for a contrary (and, I think, better informed) view.

RTFM

[FullBandwidth]

Anyone who's ever read documentation written by an engineer should immediately realize that the Voynich Manuscript is the user's guide for the Antikythera Mechansim.

I've got it...

[Anonymous Coward]

...based on the illustrations (plants, herbs, astrological symbols, and MANY butt-ugly naked women), this was the medieval version of "How to Seduce Women and Add Inches to Your Penis"

Re:Get cheap publicity fast, spout of a theory!!

[Guy Harris]

So, you have a theory, right, and it has a spout?

I'm a little theory Short and stout Here's my handle Here's my spout.