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A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Simona Vargiu - 26-08-2025

Dear members of the community,
I would like to share with you a study I have recently published on Zenodo:
The Voynich Manuscript as an Evolutionary Code: A DNA-Inspired Statistical Model - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

The central hypothesis is that the manuscript should not be read as a traditional text, but rather as a code built upon a hidden structure.
The method applies statistical tools inspired by genetics:
  • Adjacency frequencies and χ² tests,
  • Complexity measures (Lempel–Ziv),
  • Sequence and run-length analysis,
  • A page-by-page study to detect trends and evolutionary variations.
These analyses reveal significant patterns suggesting a regulated and dynamic construction process, rather than a random or purely linguistic one.
I am sharing this here because I believe this perspective may spark new reflections on the manuscript’s nature:
  • Is it plausible that the Voynich follows internal rules similar to those of a code?
  • How does this vision compare with the main hypotheses explored so far (language, cipher, pseudo-text)?
The study is available in open access at this DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16937648

Best
Simona
.pdf   The Voynich Manuscript as an Evolutionary Code A DNA-Inspired Statistical Model.pdf (Size: 205.02 KB / Downloads: 30)

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - RobGea - 26-08-2025

Hi Simona,
please explain how you used ChatGPT5 in your study.
The method lacks crucial details for reproducibility:
Exactly which EVA -transcription did you use,
How did you treat uncertain spaces, unknown characters eva-?, and the rare characters.
Which medieval latin and vernacular texts did you use, how did you treat non-AZ characters like latin ligatures.or diacritics in those texts.

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Simona Vargiu - 26-08-2025

Hi RobGea,
thank you for your interest in my work and for raising these important questions regarding reproducibility. Let me clarify the methodological steps and also share the reasoning that initially led me to this approach.
My starting point was quite simple: I first tried to understand how many distinct symbols composed the manuscript in order to see whether it behaved more like a natural language or a coded system. While examining the manuscript — mainly through the digitized images available online — I was also struck by the illustrations: some of the shapes resemble musical notations or complementary geometric patterns. This inspired me to test whether the text could be mapped onto a code-like system, eventually leading me to explore a correspondence with the four DNA bases (as a metaphor for a minimal, structured code).
  • EVA transcription: I used [specify version – e.g. the Interlinear Voynich Transcription available on René Zandbergen’s site / Takahashi transcription / another source]. This served as my reference corpus.
  • Uncertain spaces and unknown characters (eva-?, gaps, uncertain readings): these were either removed from the analysis or mapped to a neutral placeholder that was excluded from statistical calculations, so as not to introduce artificial structure.
  • Rare characters: they were included if present in the EVA corpus, but given their very low frequency they did not significantly affect the statistical results. In some tests I grouped them under a generic “other” category.
  • Control texts (Latin and vernacular medieval): I used
    • . The choice was made to match manuscript length and structure as closely as possible.
    • Treatment of non-A–Z characters (ligatures, diacritics, abbreviations): these were normalized to their base Latin letters (e.g. æ → ae, diacritics removed, abbreviations expanded when possible). This ensured consistency across corpora.
    • Use of ChatGPT-5: I did not use it to generate results, but as an assistant for data preprocessing (e.g. cleaning inconsistent transcription entries, normalizing characters) and for generating reproducible code snippets (Python) that carried out the statistical analyses. All methodological decisions, mappings, and final results were made by me.
    I hope this clarifies the methodology and also the intellectual context that guided my choices.
    Best regards,
    Simona Vargiu


RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Ruby Novacna - 26-08-2025

Hello Simona!
Congratulations on the article format; this must be the first publication using ChatGPT that adheres to the presentation plan. As for the content, I'm waiting to read the opinions of DNA specialists.

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Simona Vargiu - 26-08-2025

Hi Ruby,
thank you very much for your kind words! I agree with you: AI must be introduced into research because it allows us to experiment with many more ideas in a shorter time. At the same time, however, I see it only as a tool — the researcher remains the one who leads the reasoning and makes the methodological decisions.
In my study the DNA analogy is meant as an example of a logical and schematic structure, not as a biological claim. My aim was to test whether the structural patterns I intuitively perceived in the manuscript could also be confirmed at a logical–mathematical level. And, so far, the results seem to support this impression.
But of course I fully agree with you: it will be very interesting to hear the opinions of specialists in mathematics and genetics on this approach.
Best regards,
Simona

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Ruby Novacna - 26-08-2025

(26-08-2025, 06:48 PM)Simona Vargiu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  • EVA transcription: I used [specify version – e.g. the Interlinear Voynich Transcription available on René Zandbergen’s site / Takahashi transcription / another source]. This served as my reference corpus.
...
  • Control texts (Latin and vernacular medieval): I used
    • . The choice was made to match manuscript length and structure as closely as possible

Is it always the robot that answers?

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Simona Vargiu - 26-08-2025

No Smile , I organized the reply myself and I also took parts from my own work, but I asked for a translation because my native language is Italian and I didn’t want to write anything incorrect.
The intuition, the work and the result are mine, I tested my idea and verified that it made sense, I used chat gpt and I use it to get more academic answers but the substance is mine!
Best
Simona

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Mauro - 26-08-2025

Thanks for your contribution!

May I ask why you keep talking about 'DNA structure' when you specifically say your intent is (obviously) not to suggest 'DNA' is involved with the VMS? Why not just map the Voynich symbols to four different characters, say A B C D or X Y W Z? Adding the 'DNA' part is unnecessary, irrelevant and confusing.

You say, in your article:
Quote:Robustness Verification
We verified robustness by repeating the analysis with alternative rotations of the EVA→DNA mapping. For
instance, instead of a→A, b→C, c→G, d→T, we used a→C, b→G, c→T, d→A. In all cases, Voynich trends
remained significant (p < 0.001), while controls remained flat. This shows that results do not depend on
arbitrary mapping choices, but reflect intrinsic coherence of the manuscript.

But the mapping a→A, b→C, c→G, d→T is exactly the same as a→C, b→G, c→T, d→A, or a→X, b→Y, c→W, d→Z or to whatever symbols you choose for the substitution.

Also, if I did not misunderstand, the cyclical mapping uses the 'alphabetical' sequence of EVA letters (a,b,c,d,e...), which is by itslef completely arbitrary.

Abount Lempel-Ziv complexity: it's a given that it will decrease when replacing 26 symbols with just 4 symbols.

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - Simona Vargiu - 26-08-2025

Ciao Mauro,
thank you very much for this thoughtful observation. You are right: once I realized that there might be an underlying scheme, I could have represented it with neutral symbols (A, B, C, D). However, I think it is important not to overlook two elements of the manuscript: i)The illustrations often move from microscopic/biological motifs (which some interpret as unicellular organisms) to plants and more complex structures. ii) The text itself is divided into sections that many scholars have tentatively described as “biological,” “pharmaceutical,” “astronomical/astrological,” balneological,and so on.
Taken together, these aspects gave me the impression of a kind of compendium of natural knowledge, even an intuition of evolutionary processes. This is why I thought it was stimulating to use the DNA metaphor as a coding structure.
In practice, I applied the analysis page by page, to see if there was a progression in the “DNA-like” patterns, and then compared the sections with each other to test whether the variations in base distributions were coherent across the manuscript divisions. Finally, I performed falsification tests to show that the results do not depend on the specific DNA labels, but rather on the existence of an internal scheme.
So the point is not that “DNA is the key” to the Voynich Manuscript, but that the schema itself may exist. Using DNA was a heuristic choice — both fascinating in its results, and at the same time limited, since of course the concept of DNA did not exist at the time of the manuscript. Much more work is needed before one could speak of a solution, or even of one possible solution.
Best regards,
Simona

RE: A New Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript: A Statistical Evolutionary Code - tavie - 26-08-2025

Welcome.  

I'm not completely clear on the DNA thing.  You say it's just an analogy.  But the document also says:  "Stereochemistry: DNA bases are naturally grouped (Purines: A,G; Pyrimidines: C,T; Amino/Keto; weak AT vs strong GC bonds). These symmetries suggest that the manuscript might represent a flattened 3D model of DNA."  

I'm also not completely clear on the extent of Chat GPT's role.  You say it was used to prepare the data and not generate the results, although I was inferring from what you said in the doc about being responsible for the concept and direction that Chat GPT was involved in the production and testing of results.  Can you please let us know exactly what Chat GPT did and didn't do as part of contributing to the study?  Is there anyway Chat GPT influenced the results?  Did it interpret them and provide you with views?  

The reason I'm asking is that Chat GPT hallucinates to keep its users happy and encourage them to keep using it. This is happening more and more frequently with the Voynich manuscript.  A user has an idea, prompts the AI, and the AI tells them they have made a breakthrough and fleshes it out for them.  We've seen at least two types of this:
  • When it responds to a prompt by telling the user their idea solves the manuscript.  To prove this, it generates fake Voynichese.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of these happened only just this last weekend.
  • When it responds to a prompt by telling the user their idea reveals hidden patterns or themes in the manuscript.  The patterns are made up by the AI.  Please check out You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.by someone who claimed to find four themes in the manuscript.  They've included part of the AI's response, and quite fascinatingly, even when told it is relying on wrong data, the model is telling her that her idea still works, and even that it is applicable to the Phaistos Disc.