This news item is getting a lot of
Internet play but I felt that the the commentary out there did not
emphasize one of the most appealing elements of the proposed Voynich
solution and so we will do so here.
To backup a bit, a manuscript was
acquired in 1912 by a collector of rare manuscripts whose text
appeared to be enciphered and whose illustrations were exotic and
whose provenance appeared to be about 16th century. Many, many
people have tried to decode the text and failed. Many others have
asserted that the document is a forgery or fraud and at least as many
have said they believe it is genuine.
But the biggest mystery was, if it was
genuine, what is its backstory? How could it have come out of
nothing without someone having known about it? A secret cult ? A
mysterious religion ? Proof once more of aliens from outer space
who have come for our women ?
What makes this story all the better is
that the proposed solution comes from a retired botanist and
antiquarian who has published in the journal of the American Botany
Council.
So far the response to this paper, from other botanists at least, has been very positive.
So far the response to this paper, from other botanists at least, has been very positive.
What appealed to me was
the implied answer to the questions of why the language seems
unknown, why no one knew of this document, why the plants are
exotic and so forth. The answer suggested by the proposal is because it was created by indiginous people in New Spain (e.g. Mexico) who later
died of one of the epidemics, whose dialect went extinct with so many
others in that period, and whose related documents were all burned by
the Spanish as they burned so many documents in order to destroy the
culture of their conquered territory.
See
and the essay itself
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