Breakthrough for the Voynich Manuscript

[Garuda]

"Authors Propose Unique New World Origins of Obscure Voynich Manuscript in HerbalGram

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the 100th issue of its quarterly, peer-reviewed journal, HerbalGram, the nonprofit American Botanical Council published a feature that may change the course of research on an approximately 500-year-old, illuminated text known as the Voynich Manuscript. Written in a curious language that is yet un-deciphered, the enigma of the Voynich has puzzled scholars and mystery enthusiasts since its 1912 discovery by Polish book collector Wilfrid M. Voynich."

(...)

"Dr. Tucker — botanist, emeritus professor, and co-director of the Claude E. Phillips Herbariumat Delaware State University — and Mr. Talbert, a retired information technologist formerly employed by the US Department of Defense and NASA, decided to look first at the botanical illustrations in the Voynich Manuscript and compare them to the world's geographic plant distribution at the time of the manuscript's first recorded appearance (ca. 1576-1612). The similarities between a plant illustrated in the Voynich Manuscript and the soap plant depicted in the 1552 Codex Cruz-Badianus of Mexico — considered the first medical text written in the New World — propelled the authors down a path leading to the identification of 37 plants, 6 animals, and 1 mineral in the manuscript from the Americas — specifically, from post-Conquest Nueva España (New Spain) and the surrounding regions."

Read more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1689897

[Doc]

From the link, it appears some of the plants illustrated have names in Nahuatl and other old Central American languages but the body of the text is not yet identifiable. The researchers think it may be an extinct dialect. If true, that gives translators and cryptographers something new to work on. Maybe this mystery will be solved soon.

[Wally]

Is it possible to perform DNA on the vellum the pages were written on? Maybe they could discover the area of the world where the vellum came from.

[Doc]

Is it possible to perform DNA on the vellum the pages were written on? Maybe they could discover the area of the world where the vellum came from.

If not that, I'm sure some kind of useful testing could be done and maybe some has been done. Quite often there is kind of an interest/resources ratio to these things. Testing can be very expensive and if the interest isn't great enough, raising the funds can be difficult if not impossible.

[Wally]

Hopefully when quantum computing is perfected then maybe they will be able to decipher it.

[Wally]

Maybe they won't need quantum computing after all:
Famously Indecipherable Ancient Manuscript That Baffled Even Nazi Enigma Code Breakers Translated by AI (http://www.newsweek.com/famously-indecipherable-medieval-manuscript-baffled-nazi-enigma-code-breakers-790729)
It will be interesting to find out what the book says after they've translated it all.

[Garuda]

The text has now officially been identified, and the alphabet decoded:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7031849/Worlds-mysterious-text-cracked.html

It's written in Proto-Romance, and the symbols represent the letters we're familiar with from the Latin alphabet, but a) drawn differently, and b) like in Greek, different pictograms can be used depending on the position of the letter in the word. Greek, e.g., has two symbols for the letter sigma, and which one is used depends on whether the letter is used as the last letter of the word, or elsewhere in the word. Similarly, in the Voynich manuscript, the letter a, e.g., is drawn differently if it's the first or last letter of a word, or whether it's in the word.

It took the guy who deciphered it only two weeks to do so.

His findings were peer-reviewed.