Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey.
The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most elusive pieces of writing known to man, written
in a code that has yet to be cracked.
We don’t know who wrote it, why they wrote it, or even the language in which it was written,
but that doesn’t stop us from continuing to study it to this day.
But do we have any ideas about it?
And will the mystery ever be solved?
Let’s explore.
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on the channel.
Now get ready, it’s time to ask the question: Will we ever decode the Voynich Manuscript?
The Voynich Manuscript is an illustrated and hand-written codex, named after Wilfrid Voynich,
a Polish book dealer who bought the manuscript in 1912.
It’s been carbon-dated to the early 15th century, believed to have been written during
the Italian Renaissance.
Roughly 240 pages remain, with text written from left to right, using 25 to 30 distinct
characters.
It also includes a number of diagrams and even some pages with foldable sheets.
Thus far, decoding efforts have been met with little success.
Using the diagrams, researchers have determined that it’s likely divided into 6 sections:
herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological, pharmaceutical, and recipes, possible including
some mystical elements as well.
Unfortunately, that’s just about all we know about it, despite decades of attempting
to decipher it.
Most experts believe that it is likely written using a substitution code, wherein each letter
of the alphabet is substituted with a different symbol.
Unfortunately, researchers continue to struggle to find what letters they initially were,
and thus, what language it originated from.
Some believe that it is further encoded using anagrams, mixing up the letters of each word,
although this is a point of contention amongst researchers.
This would make it even more difficult to crack, and would explain the difficulty we’ve
had in decoding it.
As far as the use of the text, many agree that it is likely medical in nature, due to
the categories into which it is believed to be divided.
It bears a striking resemblance to certain known Latin medical texts from around the
same time, with some even arguing that it was a plagiarism of said texts.
Some make further arguments as to the involvement of alchemy and astrology in the text, but
this is little more than educated speculation.
There has also been a good deal of discussion as to the author of the manuscript.
Much of this is based on the rather unique skills and knowledge of the author, as well
as some he-said she-said correspondence in the form of letters from the time.
The most popular explanation is that it was written by Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar
who happened to be a polymath.
The many languages of the polymath would certainly come in handy when composing a manuscript
in a cryptic code.
Some think it could actually be the work of Italian engineer Giovanna Fontana.
This is because many of the drawings in the manuscript resembled known works of Fontana.
He also used code in his own work, and so would be well-equipped for the writing of
the manuscript.
Still others believe that it was Voynich himself who wrote it, in an attempt to pass it off
as Bacon’s work, in order to sell it and make a great deal of money.
As a bookseller, he would likely have had the experience and skills necessary to make
the forgery.
For a time, this was discounted, since the carbon dating of the manuscript would have
required him to have access to a great deal of unused parchment from the 15th century.
However, with the recently discovered forgery of the 2000 year old Dead Sea Scrolls, it
seems that the idea of Voynich forging the manuscript isn’t as ridiculous as we once
believed.
Unfortunately, recent decades have brought us little more than speculation and vague
inferences.
However, with the advancements in AI codebreaking of late, many believe the solution has never
been closer.
In early 2018, reports began circulating that an Artificial intelligence had been tasked
with decoding the manuscript, and that it had succeeded.
Sadly, this seems more like a case of media sensationalism than a definitive answer.
It all started with the presentation of a paper entitled Decoding Anagrammed Texts Written
in an Unknown Language and Script, where Greg Kondrak and Bradley Hauer claimed that the
manuscript had originally been written in Hebrew, before being encoded.
This was found using computer algorithms that studied various features of the code, such
as the frequency of each symbol.
They translated the code into Hebrew, and then the Hebrew into English, to come with
what seemed to be coherent sentences.
Unfortunately, further analysis found that Kondrak and Hauer made a number of missteps
that may have hurt the efficacy of their findings.
For one, they were basing it on the structure of modern languages, while the manuscript
is believed to have been from the 15th century, where the language structure would be much
different.
Furthermore, the pair was assuming that the code was based on anagrams, thus required
a rearrangement of letters.
This led them to rearrange certain letters in Google Translate when trying to translate
the Hebrew into English.
And as it happens, written Hebrew is very easy to manipulate, since it is written without
vowels.
It would have been rather easy for the researchers to simply change the words so that they made
sense in English, giving the appearance of a successful codebreaking.
They weren’t necessarily putting the puzzle together; they could well have been shoving
pieces in where they didn’t fit and they would be none the wiser.
Despite the high hopes of the media, this finding is far from conclusive, even if it
does make the use of AI in codebreaking seem more promising.
And now we return to our question: Will we ever decode the Voynich Manuscript?
Well, it’s hard to say.
We have learned a small amount over the years, and research into AI codebreaking is looking
good, but it’s impossible to know if we will ever fully decode it.
It could even be that it can’t be done; perhaps it was written in gibberish as an
ancient prank.
Regardless, the search continues, and if it’s something that interests you, I’d highly
advise getting involved.
Maybe you will be the one to finally crack the code.
Thank you for watching Life’s Biggest Questions, I hope this was interesting and informative,
and maybe even inspired you to look into it further on your own.
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While you’re down there, let me know your thoughts on this famous manuscript, and also
what other mysteries you’d like us to delve into in future videos.
Until next time, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey with Life’s Biggest Questions, wishing you
the best of luck, on your quest for answers.