The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and it may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish-Samogitian book dealer who purchased it in 1912.[18] Some of the pages are missing, with around 240 remaining. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams. Some pages are foldable sheets.
The Voynich manuscript is considered to be the most mysterious text ever uncovered as it has never been deciphered despite over a century of attempts to uncover its meaning and more than 25 different analyses from top minds around the world. This has led some to claim that the Voynich manuscript is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. However, a new study published in the journal HerbalGram may provide a clue that could break the code of the enigmatic manuscript.
While the manuscript appears to be written in an unknown language, latest finding supports the hypothesis that there are meaningful words and messages within the text. 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 Institution in Washington DC.
For a great deal of the book, the plants and life forms in the pages are unidentifiable. However, some of the crudely drawn plants have been discovered in other works. the latest study has found a link between illustrations of plants in the manuscript and depictions in 16 th century records from Mexico of plants native to Central America, suggesting a new origin for the text.
This was extremely surprising, most scholars suspected the tome to be from Europe or another Eastern Country. The most striking example was an illustration of a soap plant (xiuhamolli) in a Mexican book dated 1552. Arthur Tucker, co-director of the Claude E. Phillips Herbarium at Delaware State University, 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. Â
On the basis of these similarities, the pair suggests that the manuscript came from the Central America, and may be written in an extinct dialect of the Mexican language Nahuatl. Deciphering the names of these plants could therefore help crack the Voynich code. Some proponents still say that if you look in the wilderness in multiple locations you will most likely find plants that resemble those in the photos.
There is also an individual who thinks the entire book is not a hoax, but a reproduction, a best of if you will, of ancient medical writings. it is known that scribes in the 15th/16th centuries were known to copy manuscripts just as priests would do with holy works. History researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs seems to have a possible lead to crack the code. Because the manuscript has been entirely digitized by Yale's Beinecke Library, he could see tiny details in each page and pore over them at his leisure. His experience with medieval Latin and familiarity with ancient medical guides allowed him to uncover the first clues.
Gibbs found after much research that some of the "strange" language appears to be latin short hand. Or abbreviations, as in medical writings. The herbs are plants used in medicines. other images of women bathing with certain utencils are from a seperate manuscript describing women being prescribed certain baths to kill illness. Gibbs concluded that the manuscript was completely a medical guide, mainly devoted to womens medicine, and more than likely a one of a kind.
He put forth that it was more than likely transcribed from great historians, priests, and doctors. He also stated that it was more than likely made for one person, or a small group of practitioners, thus leading more to its rarity. It is very possibly the only one in existence. Certainly fascinating, yet a less popular end of a great mystery that was once suspected to be from another planet. I am constantly surprised by the amount we once knew as a species, and how quickly we seem to forget.