full title: American Botanical Council Publishes Revolutionary Analysis Unlocking Mysteries of 500-Year-Old Manuscript
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Posted on 01/25/2014 1:07:58 PM PST by SunkenCiv
HerbalGram's feature article by Arthur O. Tucker, PhD, and Rexford H. Talbert, titled "A Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Mineralogy of the Voynich Manuscript," is based on a unique, investigative approach to understanding the strange manuscript...
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.
In identifying the plants, animals, and minerals, the authors of the HerbalGram article found more compelling evidence to support their theory. They write, "A search of the 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" — references to some of the native languages of Mexico prior to the Spanish Conquest. The majority of the text, the authors propose, is an extinct dialect, keeping much of the Voynich Manuscript's secrets intact…for now.
(Excerpt) Read more at digitaljournal.com ...
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Believe it or not I have been thinking of the Voynich Manuscript all week.
How interesting. But what I really wonder is what does their secrecy mean? They were funding trips to the Americas and wanted to control the cash crops? Did the Aztecs write it?
A Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Mineralogy of the Voynich Manuscript
FURTHER IMAGES AT LINK
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Neat! Indications that it’s not fiction is good.
Very interesting.
This is the first real advance in years, perhaps decades.
Thanks!
Still doesn’t explain the languages, I believe two, the thing is written in.
A picture of a plant says one thing, the decipherment of the text says another.
> “A search of the 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” — references to some of the native languages of Mexico prior to the Spanish Conquest. The majority of the text, the authors propose, is an extinct dialect, keeping much of the Voynich Manuscript’s secrets intact…for now.
Whoops, thanks Greysard.
Perhaps a native American language written phonetically by an European author?
The botanists propose that the author was an Aztec who was educated by Spanish priests:
Axiomatically, the Spanish priests established schools for children of the Aztec elite, teaching them European writing methods, painting, and Latin. Probably one of the most famous products of these schools, the Codex Cruz-Badianus, was completed by two students educated at the College of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco. It was written in Nahuatl by Martin de la Cruz — a native convert and practicing physician at the College of Santa Cruz — and translated into Latin by Juan Badiano, another native convert and student of the College. Two versions of this manuscript exist, the original Codex Cruz-Badianus, formerly in the Vatican, returned in 1990 by Pope Paul II to Mexico (now at the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologie e Historia in Mexico City [F1219 B135 1940]), and a later copy at the Royal Library of Windsor Castle (RCIN970335).9-12
If this theory is correct, one big question about the manuscript becomes resolved: it is not a European hoax. Very few people in Europe could have known native American plants in such detail; those who went to Americas had no need, or skill, to write books - they were busy hauling gold.
Once that is determined, it should be relatively easy to interpret the language. As Mr. Legrand explained:
"In the present case --indeed in all cases of secret writing --the first question regards the language of the cipher; for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned, depend on, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun on the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was, I assumed the cryptograph to be English.
Looks like very few researchers of the Voynich Manuscript were willing to accept that the language of the cipher is a dead dialect of a regional language - and an Aztec one. The book surfaced in Europe, so it was logical to suspect Latin and a cipher (considering religious persecution.) Perhaps there is no cipher at all, and the writer simply made up his alphabet on the spot, starting with glyphs from Latin and other european alphabets and modifying them to signify phonems of his own language (if the writing is phonetic, which it appears to be.) This language would not need a cipher; it would have been understood only by a few educated Aztec elites anyway.
... Drink ... More ... Ovaltine ...
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