The Voynich Ninja

(13-02-2026, 03:17 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That might be interesting to check is whether a re-ordering of pages or bifolios is possible such that the pattern of consecutive paragraph lengths shows some correlation. But perhaps this was already attempted?

I wrote the script for that last week. Still needs some improvements...

All the best, --stolfi

(11-02-2026, 07:08 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:What I was saying was, why not ask a Chinese scribe to copy it IN CHINESE, and bring THAT home?

Again: because the Author had learned the spoken language, but had no hope of learning the written one. 

To be minimally literate in Chinese (enough to, say, read a newspaper) one must have memorized at least a couple thousand characters. Chinese students reach that level by the end of high school.  When I was learning Japanese, after a year I had managed to learn only a hundred or so (and forgot most of them already..)

And I am not making up that scenario.  The Jesuits who reached China and Vietnam after 1500 invented phonetic scripts for those languages -- even though they had already their own scripts, and some Jesuits managed to become literate in them.  For the same reason: to make the language more accessible to the folks back home in Europe.

All the best, --stolfi

I had not noticed you replied to my post. Thanks. I am not persuaded generally that using the Voynich TEXT as a whole, or in broad sections, for arriving at statistical comparisons that can offer reliable solutions. There are lots of ifs and whens with text, and your tendency to explain away the visuals simply as decorations in the manuscript is utterly unconvincing to me, sorry to say. 

I think your dismissing the visuals has been serving your Chinese solution, and abstract statistical comparisons devoid of reasonable historical and practical need context will not offer any viable way of understanding the book. 

I think solutions based on the study of specific, visually associated, text and also understanding visual clues in the entire manuscript will offer a more reliable way of going about understanding the manuscript. 

But regarding the last question quoted above that you were answering, I am still puzzled why you are misunderstanding my question or avoiding answering it. It is a simple practical question that has implications for explaining your "solution". 

Your Chinese solution is based on the notion that the "author" had to transcribe it in his own way to bring it home. My question is, why was that needed? He could go to a Chinese notary, scribe house, and say, "can you transcribe this for me so I can take it home?" He did not even need to know Chinese for that, orally or written. 

That is a much more reliable way of doing this and bringing a copy home, than inventing a whole new transcription system. It does not even matter whether he knew Chinese or not, orally or not. 

You are just going around and avoiding answering this simple question I was asking and I am not sure why you are doing this, Jorge. You are avoiding a question that undermines why the manuscript had to be transcribed in Voynichese in the first place.

You are making odd claims to explain the rest of the manuscript. Scribal errors, visuals being just made up, seem to all serve your trying to make the Chinese solution work. These don't make sense to me, sorry.

Just to add one more point, if you say he knew Chinese orally, but not in written, if he is sitting by someone reading him the text, and he understood it, he could just write it in his own language in translation. So, the Chinese copy he is having a scribe transcribe, could then be accompanied with his own translation. Does that not make a more reasonable thing to do than invent a new transcription?

I can't believe you're still mulling over this theory 

(13-02-2026, 02:41 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:And you are asking us to believe that this is statistically significant?

Yes, because it definitely is.

No, it definitely isn't. You have generated no measure of level of statistical confidence in your hypothesis that there is a match between  aiin words and 'zhu'. Any professional statistician is going to swat the robustness of the analysis in your report. Your short report is short on analysis. The long paragraph does not give enough data on which the methods of statistical hypothesis testing can be used. The shape of the histograms of paragraph sizes are the shape of any random distribution.

I feel it is a bit high of you to stamp your report with the statement 'The Last Section of the Voynich Manuscript is the Chinese Medical Classic Shennong Bencaojin', and now to say 'it definitely is'.

(13-02-2026, 06:15 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think your dismissing the visuals has been serving your Chinese solution

I would restate that as: "considering the decorative elements as significant is the logical mistake that has led people astray and prevented them from finding the solution for more than 100 years."

All the best, --stolfi

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(13-02-2026, 06:15 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.He could go to a Chinese notary, scribe house, and say, "can you transcribe this for me so I can take it home?"

But what would he do with such a transcription back home?

All the best, --stolfi

(13-02-2026, 09:19 AM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't believe you're still mulling over this theory

I can't believe that people are still clinging to the "European Origin" theory -- which is supported by  ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence, and contradicted by 408 tons (metric) of evidence.

All the best, --stolfi

(13-02-2026, 06:29 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.he understood it, he could just write it in his own language in translation.

He would not be able to translate most of the words in the SBJ, because they are names of diseases or of weird drugs. (Do you know what is "metrorrhagia", or a "horse dewcap" or the "yellow lining of the gizzard", and how those terms translate into any other language you know?) 

"Chinese" doctors would know (most of) those terms, and maybe other Europeans who have been in that same country knew some.  Presumably he tried to compile a glossary after taking the dictation, trying to read it, and running his yellow highlighter over the terms he did not understand.  "Please, can you explain what kind of condition or disease is xiè lì?" [ten minutes later writes down:] "seems to be diarrhea".

All the best, --stolfi

(13-02-2026, 10:52 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-02-2026, 06:15 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think your dismissing the visuals has been serving your Chinese solution

I would restate that as: "considering the decorative elements as significant is the logical mistake that has led people astray and prevented them from finding the solution for more than 100 years."

I would restate that as: "Considering the wrong interpretations of the illustrations is a mistake that has led people astray and may have prevented them from finding the solution for more than 100 years."

(13-02-2026, 11:36 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-02-2026, 09:19 AM)AliciaNelPresente Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't believe you're still mulling over this theory

I can't believe that people are still clinging to the "European Origin" theory -- which is supported by  ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence, and contradicted by 408 tons (metric) of evidence.

The claim that the European Origin theory is supported by 'ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence' is scientifically untenable. It ignores the entire forensic reality of the object.

Let’s look at the '408 tons' of hard evidence that anchor this object to Europe, specifically Northern Italy:

- The radiocarbon dating (1404–1438) places the vellum in the early 15th century. The ink chemistry (Iron Gall) is consistent with European recipes of that period. The quire binding is European. Unless you suggest the 'Author' shipped 15 calfskins from Europe to Asia, processed them there, and shipped them back to be bound, the physical artifact is European.

- The Scribe, your own admission: You concede that 'The analysis of castle and dress drawings... makes it almost certain that the Scribe was from Northern Italy. If the scribe is Italian, the materials are European, and the style is Venetian/Lombardic, then the Null Hypothesis must be that the text is also of local origin. To argue otherwise requires extraordinary evidence, which the 'Chinese Theory' lacks.

- The 'bench' or 'gallows' are common in legal shorthand of the era. It is far more logical that a European scribe used familiar abbreviation symbols to write a constrained European code, rather than inventing a new phonetic script that coincidentally looks exactly like a Latin chancery ledger.

You cite low entropy as proof of a monosyllabic Asian language. This is a logical leap. Low entropy simply indicates a highly constrained system. A ledger, an index, or a technical list in Latin also exhibits low entropy and rigid structure because it is not narrative prose. We don't need to traverse the Silk Road to explain rigidity, we just need to look at a European inventory.

We are looking at a European artifact, written by a European scribe, using European symbols. The 'strangeness' comes from the method of encoding, not the continent of origin.