# A breakthrough on the Voynich Manuscript? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 23, 2014, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490 "2014-01-23T00:54:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nickpelling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/848f3c/32.png) [@nickpelling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nickpelling)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490/21 "2014-01-24T11:29:47Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > 1. The authors (Tucker & Talbert) are botanists and they published the paper in a botany magazine. Of course they focused on the botany. To be precise, they published it in a herbal medicine magazine. > [@Merneith](#): > > 1. The authors are correct when they say that other branches of inquiry have not been very fruitful because, in fact, we don’t know where or when or by whom the manuscript was written. In fact, good Voynich research has come a long way in the last few years, with many excellent presentations at the 2012 centenary conference in Frascati. My own presentation there was on what the marginalia (particularly the quire numbers) and gatherings / rebindings tell us about the early history of the manuscript. Specifically, we now have a reasonable body of evidence from multiple domains that tells us a lot about when and how the Voynich Manuscript was written, none of which is compatible with Tucker & Talbert’s conclusions without Tardis-like intervention. Incidentally, parallel hatching had only a very brief period when it was in active use (it was quickly replaced by cross-hatching, which was more expressive). > [@Merneith](#): > > 1. I still think. upon rereading both, that your article is too quick to dismiss them for not having exhaustively compared their theories to other theories which they may or may not even know. I also think your article doesn’t really address Tucker & Talbert’s actual claims, not the stuff you think they should have discussed. The first problem is that all the basic stuff they should have addressed runs counter to what they claim - making historical claims on an analysis of a single (and much contested) aspect is problematic at best, a recipe for epic fail at worst. Reconciling a 16th century narrative with multiple domain 15th century dating evidence is always going to involve some kind of awkward wriggling. The second problem is that even though there has already been quite a lot of discussion both about plants and about Nahuatl as a possible source for Voynichese, it really doesn’t appear that they engaged with either to any significant degree. The third problem is… oh, I’m going to stop there before it goes all TL;DR. 🙂 > [@Merneith](#): > > Don’t just cite your personal website. Cite the actual peer-reviewed papers about the dating of the vellum or the handwriting (and then provide cites that explain why it’s impossible the 15thC vellum couldn’t have been used or reused in the 16thC or that the handwriting couldn’t have been taught to someone at any time but then). I would be delighted to point people to such things, if they existed: but Voynich research has been dominated by poor thinking (read: “crackpots”) for so long that it is hard to find a place to publish highly technical articles on non-cryptographic aspects of it (for which Cryptologia is good). > [@Merneith](#): > > Wait - do you mean here that it is the handwritten font or language in which the manuscript is written? Because on rereading the article linked above by Leaper, it seems you use the word “Voynichese” in various ways. I try to consistently use “Voynichese” to refer to the non-marginalia text in the Voynich Manuscript, though sometimes I do use it to refer to the way Voynichese writing works, mainly because referring to that as the “putative cryptographic superstructure underlying the Voynichese text” is a bit clunky, even for me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490/22 "2014-02-19T20:11:29Z")
I just saw [this](http://www.beds.ac.uk/news/2014/february/600-year-old-mystery-manuscript-decoded-by-university-of-bedfordshire-professor) today: any thoughts? The gist is that it’s an Asian or Near Eastern language with some borrowings from Greek / Arabic which might be a key to decipherment. [This](http://stephenbax.net/?page_id=11) links to his academic paper. He’s not proposing a decipherment or identifying the language yet, just 10 words / 14 signs, which seems much more likely than the wholesale “I have the answer” stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2014, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490/23 "2014-02-20T11:19:00Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > OK…wassa ‘swirly’? I believe they’re referring to the semi-mythical schoolboy “prank” which in Australia and New Zealand is known as “Dunny Flushing”, ie upending the nerd/pointdexter/dweeb into a toilet and then flushing it. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490/24 "2014-03-16T07:52:08Z")
Bumping to report that there’s another professor claiming to have made a breakthrough. His name is Bax, and he’s a professor of applied linguistics. [He thinks it’s a treatise on nature in a Near Eastern or Asian language](http://www.beds.ac.uk/news/2014/february/600-year-old-mystery-manuscript-decoded-by-university-of-bedfordshire-professor). ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490/25 "2014-03-16T10:05:28Z")
> [@Morgyn](#): > > Bumping to report that there’s another professor claiming to have made a breakthrough. > > His name is Bax, and he’s a professor of applied linguistics. [He thinks it’s a treatise on nature in a Near Eastern or Asian language](http://www.beds.ac.uk/news/2014/february/600-year-old-mystery-manuscript-decoded-by-university-of-bedfordshire-professor). Thats what Dr Drake posted ,only 2 back. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490/26 "2014-03-17T03:34:04Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > Thats what Dr Drake posted ,only 2 back. :o [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-breakthrough-on-the-voynich-manuscript/679490.md?page=1)