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+--- Thread: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? (/thread-1715.html)
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PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - voynichbombe - 26-03-2017
For some it may be experience, a thought experiment for others - How would you explain the Voynich Manuscript to a child?
Feel free to choose the age of your (imaginary) enquirer.
Also let us know if you _received an explanation
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - nickpelling - 26-03-2017
"It's an old manuscript that nobody can (yet) read, and which has a habit of making adults look like idiots when they try to guess what it is. Unfortunately, they keep on guessing!"
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - Diane - 27-03-2017
A book whose written text no-one can read, though the pictures are often used to illustrate fairy-tales.
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - -JKP- - 27-03-2017
Six hundred years ago, before your ancestors made the perilous sea voyage to North America, a middle-aged man in an apron with sinewy arms and many scars, stretched his sore arms as he tanned and scraped the skins of goats so they could be smoothed and flattened to accept ink. His wife and son, a boy about your age, with fingers stained as brown as walnuts, were crushing hard nuggets called galls. Galls are boo-boos on a tree, a tree's stress reaction to the invasion of insect larvae. They can be pried from the bark with a sharp knife and mixed with tannic acid and other ingredients to make ink.
The tanner's boy knew the skins and ink would be sold to scholars and scriptoria, where people who knew how to read and write would trim goose quills with a knife to dip in the ink and make shapes on the vellum. Neither the boy nor his father could read, but his father would sometimes carve simple dots and lines on the various containers to keep track of his quantities.
Sometime in the early 1400s, a few decades after a severe wave of plague wiped out half the people of Europe, at least two or three people sat down with vellum, gall ink, and a few natural pigments, and created the manuscript later discovered by Wilfrid Voynich. They created many large and small drawings of plants, symbols that look like zodiacs, biological pictures, images of pools, people, and animals, and drawings of suns and stars. There is also a large foldout of nine decorated circles resembling a map.
If the boy had seen the Voynich manuscript, he wouldn't have known there was anything unusual about it, but may have been fascinated by the uncommonly large number of naked nymphs. If he could read, he would have noticed the "letters" in the manuscript were different from anything he had ever seen.
Grown men were fascinated with the VMS, thinking the mysterious alphabet might be hiding a special secret, and those who owned it usually coveted it until their deaths, hoping to solve the mystery. As it was passed from hand to hand, one learned man after another tried unsuccessfully to reveal the underlying message, leaving a long trail of disappointments until Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish revolutionary from a family with a military history, emigrated to the U.S., opened an antiquarian bookstore, and went back to Europe to find things to sell in his shop.
The Jesuits loved books and many came into the hands of a multitalented Jesuit named Kircher, who maintained a scientific library. Science wasn't very advanced at the time, there were still people who thought the sun revolved around the earth, but Kircher had an inquiring mind and collected what he could.
Two-and-a-half centuries after Kircher's death, Voynich had a private chat with Jesuits at the Collegio Romano in Italy and was shown some books in a chest that had been catagued by the Vatican library—that's the library of the Pope and his compatriots in the Vatican city. The Jesuits would not sell him the books unless he swore to keep the transaction a secret, possibly due to some disagreements between the Jesuits and the Vatican about the ownership of the books. The Vatican still lists some books in its catalog that it apparently never received.
Wilfrid agreed to keep the secret and purchased the books, including what he called an "ugly duckling", a humble little codex with basic colors and a plain binding. This was the beginning of the modern journey for the unusual manuscript. Voynich thought it might be the work of Roger Bacon, famous for his work on ciphers. Ciphers are symbols used to hide information. If so, it could be worth a great deal of money.
Wilfrid and his wife spent the rest of their lives trying to unlock the secrets of the VMS. Wilfrid's correspondence about the manuscript almost landed him on the 20th-century version of a terrorist watchlist. The Intelligence Community thought he might be a spy, but it's possible they misinterpreted some of his motives.
Some of the brightest minds in the Intelligence Community also formed a work group to solve the mystery in the 1940s, but were unable to do so. Some people think it's a hoax, and a waste of time to try to decode it.
Voynich apparently felt that his secrecy agreement with the Jesuits ended with his death, and left a note in his estate about where he really found it. His wife and secretary made valiant efforts to decode it, but to no avail, and eventually it was sold to a collector who tried unsuccessfully to market it, and eventually donated it to the Yale Beinecke Library.
Now, due to the scans published on the Web, thousands, perhaps millions, of Voynich afficionados have tried decoding it without success. So far there is no Rosetta stone for the VMS, just an accumulation of small clues, and its content remains a mystery.
*Apologies in advance for any historical errors. This was written quickly and completely off the top of my head.
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - Koen G - 27-03-2017
JKP your explanation makes me want to go and collect some tree boo-boos and make my own ink
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - voynichbombe - 27-03-2017
Thank you JKP for sharing your story, pretty neat for "top of the head"! I wonder what age you imagined for your audience.
Koen, if you can't wait for "boo-boo" season, you can resort to a strong infusion of green tea, or cook a brew of banana peel (the greener the better). Some rusty bits & strong vinegar, and you're all set.. but that reminds me of another thread I wanted to open
Edit: Fun activity w/ (slightly larger) kids: Invisible ink - write with tea, let dry. Later put a drop of iron vitriol (keep this one out of reach!) on a dabber & rub across writing, which will magically turn pitch black.
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - coded - 05-05-2017
ok,
1) Kids get out some math kit and on the first jump its one but always add 1 to all the next jumps so if you jumped to two then the next jump is 3!
2) Next throw in a bunch of odd letters around a circle clued to known letters so that academia goes insane!
3) Add another circle of letters which turns but don't forget to include &.
Then write a little letter to your teacher that states your doggy ate your home work then hide the letter words with hopscotch and circled odd letters. But don't take my advice if all does not go well you will end up at the principles office with slack jaws saying what in the world is this?
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - voynichbombe - 31-05-2017
No, I wouldn't take bets on "bored Retriever vs. 9k siloé replica". Maybe on the TTD, Time To Destruction. In milliseconds.
Finally found the time to add my story:
»Papa, what are you reading?«
A new question.. Papa is flabbergasted and also in a dilemma.
»I… I can’t read this book and I don’t understand why.«
Requests to sit on lap. Quietly leafs back & forth through Yale Voynich Manuscript edition for a while. Stops at recipes section for a short moment. Exclaims:
»Upside down, Papa! Upside down!«
Jumps down and tends to toys.
This really happened, yet remained a singularity. The VMs mystery seems done & dusted, according to my daughter. She will turn 2½ in a few days.
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - Koen G - 31-05-2017
Hah. My daughter is around the same age. She hasn't been of much help yet in solving the VM riddles, though she did assure me that the Tauruses are horses.
RE: PLEASE EXPLAIN - The Voynich Manuscript for Kids? - voynichbombe - 01-06-2017
Interestingly, the imagery didn't seem to impress her at all. It was about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (OK, she liked the foldouts, but I needed to suggest a non-desctructive method for reordering folios).