(30-10-2025, 11:43 PM)magnesium Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are several major issues with the modern forgery hypothesis:
- C-14 dating strongly suggests the parchment dates to the early 15th century, and most parchment created in the early 15th century was used in the early 15th century.
- As convincingly demonstrated by Koen and Marco in this very forum, the marginalia handwriting is diagnostic of the early 15th century, specifically of documents created in a region approximately centered on Fulda, Germany.
- Some of the illustrations, notably the crossbow-wielding human Sagittarius, are also consistent with some Germanic depictions from the late medieval period.
- There are no anachronistic ingredients used in the ink or pigments.
- …And with all of this in hand, Wilfrid Voynich went around claiming the VMS was a 13th-century English document created by a specifically well-documented individual, Roger Bacon.
It strains credulity that Voynich completed a forgery in which all available material evidence converges on the early 15th century and Germanic Alpine region, even though he repeatedly and publicly attributed the book to a well-documented man living in 13th-century England.
Hi, Magnesium: Thanks for your interest and thoughtful points rebutting my theory. I'll give counter-points for them:
"- C-14 dating strongly suggests the parchment dates to the early 15th century, and most parchment created in the early 15th century was used in the early 15th century."
Yes the parchment does date to the early 15th century, and I fully agree with the testing that determined that. Although it is important to understand that the dates of the individual samples actually spanned 60 years or more, and not the neat and tidy 1404-1438 range everyone was provided from those tests. The actual numbers were "averaged" and "combined" on the "assumption" that the Voynich was created in under ten years. I explain this in my blog post called, You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view., it is myth number 8.
Also, not all vellum or parchment of any kind was used soon after creation. I found many examples of blank parchment being You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. after production. And also, by "coincidence" (ahem), Voynich purchased the Libreria Franceshini in 1908, and You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. of all kind, said to be about half a million items. He is even known to have sold old blank paper!
So I would point out that old, blank parchment has long been available, and would sufficient amounts would have arguably been owned by my suspect himself.
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"As convincingly demonstrated by Koen and Marco in this very forum, the marginalia handwriting is diagnostic of the early 15th century, specifically of documents created in a region approximately centered on Fulda, Germany."
Well if they are correct in identifying the marginalia handwriting, it is clear that writing in all styles is commonly forged. So even if they got that right, it does not mean that the writing was applied in Fulda, nor in the 15th century. And that being said, there were... before the C14 dating mentioned above... a great many expert opinions which fell outside of the 15th century, and outside Germany for that matter... for the main text and for marginalia. Those expert opinions were later ignored, on the basis of the C14 results. But among them were some pretty impressive people, and I don't think they should be ignored, on the basis of the date of the pages, which could have been written on any time from about 1400 to 1912.
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"Some of the illustrations, notably the crossbow-wielding human Sagittarius, are also consistent with some Germanic depictions from the late medieval period."
Remember, though, that old content can be drawn later, but new content can not be drawn in the past. Then, also, there is a great deal of expert and amateur disagreement on all the images, including the one you mention. And then, still again, while there is obviously old imagery in the Voynich dating to the 15th century, there are also many illustrations which are strikingly similar to all the centuries after. For instance, O. Tucker and Jules Janick have convincingly identified many plants which are post-Columbian. Others have, too, such as O'Neil identifying the sunflower and capsicum pepper. But the list of anachronistic comparisons is too long for this post... it includes many plants, some animals such as the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. armadillo, anatomy as found in Grey's, microscopic plants, cells, diatoms, and even microscopes themselves, by myself. As I said, there is much more... and IMO, far too often has this happened for it to be coincidence, or paradiolia. If even one of the dozens of such comparisons is correct, the Voynich is either post-Columbian, or if later, early 20th century.
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"There are no anachronistic ingredients used in the ink or pigments."
Actually, the McCrone report found "unusual copper and zinc", an unexplained "titanium compound", and a binder which was not gum Arabic, and unidentified by them as any other gum binder, as it was not "in their library" of normal gums. Titanium is virtually unheard of in Medieval manuscripts. You can see the graph of Richard Hark in a previous post of mine, in this thread: He tested 120 samples in 50 manuscripts, and only found traces in one or two samples. And if he used the Voynich for THOSE samples... I've asked him, he has not yet answered me... it may not be only exceedingly rare, but unheard of outside the Voynich and the Vinland Map (poor Yale).
The report also found that the ink of the last page marginalia was the same ink as used for the main test. Before this finding, it was said that that marginalia was from a later time, by a different person than the author, so it was, in a sense, odd to discover this.
"And with all of this in hand, Wilfrid Voynich went around claiming the VMS was a 13th-century English document created by a specifically well-documented individual, Roger Bacon."
True that was a poor choice of "author". But I do not believe that the work was created to look like a Bacon, but as a book owned by Horcicky, who supposedly signed it. That is, I think it was meant at first as an early 17th century work from the Court of Rudolf II, because of the best selling 1906 book, "Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolf II". A poor book, very inaccurate, but a favorite of Voynich's. He claimed to "know it by heart". And in his notes was found 19 names, all from that book, and listed in the order they appear in it. I believe it was the "primer" for the Voynich: You are not allowed to view links.
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If you read that book... it is available on Archive dot org... you might be surprised to find that so much of what people "see" in the Voynich is mentioned in it.
In any case, I think that at some point before 1912, Voynich abandoned Horciciky (as owner or creator), took pages out, re-ordered it, and pushed Bacon instead. The 700th year of Bacon's birth... 1219... was coming up, and the man's real and imagined exploits were all the rage at the time.
"It strains credulity that Voynich completed a forgery in which all available material evidence converges on the early 15th century and Germanic Alpine region, even though he repeatedly and publicly attributed the book to a well-documented man living in 13th-century England."
But the thing is, as pointed out above, it was not, and still is not, "all available material evidence"... really only the C14 dating, and then selected opinions as to the origins and regions you suggest. Many in the past, and today, will argue Italy as an origin, and other areas. If a forgery, we don't know his intentions... but as I also pointed out, the experts were and still are "all over the place" with dating and placing the origins and meaning of the work.
Have you read Mary D'Imperio's 1978 book, The Voynich: An Elegant Enigma? Many highly recommend it, as I do. It is amazing how little is really new since then, and also, it is very interesting to read the great many diverse thoughts on the work, by some very brilliant, experienced, and talented people:
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not my intention at all )