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+--- Forum: Imagery (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-43.html)
+--- Thread: [split] Could the manuscript be a copy of older documents? (/thread-1503.html)
RE: [split] Could the manuscript be a copy of older documents? - Koen G - 06-02-2017
Yes, if derivative means that it has evolved over time then I can agree with that as well.
The fascinating thing, however, is that the majority of the imagery still shows its roots more authentically than one would expect. There are two explanations for this.
Diane basically says that these parts remained understood and useful by their users, and were hence passed down in a relatively original state.
The second is along the lines of what david said. Inclusion for rarity or antiquity. This was certainly the mentality behind many Carolingian works, though I am less familiar with how this went in later periods.
I think it might be a bit of both. They included old imagery in the manuscript because they knew it might be useful, but potentially did not understand every detail behind it because the matter was so rare and old even for them. Or they saw the useful parts and commissioned those images to be copied as faithfully as possible into the manuscript.
Just hypothetical scenarios. But I hope this explains why I believe that the person copying the images may not have understood the details of what he was working on.
The text is a completely different matter, and I only have very half baked hypotheses about why it looks like it does. But I don't doubt that the script is medieval.