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+--- Thread: Voynich words evolve over a linear sequence (/thread-6199.html)
Voynich words evolve over a linear sequence - npcompl33t - 13-10-2026
For the last several weeks, I have been working on an attempt to 'translate' Herbal A to Herbal B. This turned up many probable transformations that turn words from Herbal A into Herbal B, preserving frequencies, but many of these transformations only worked between two sections, never collectively across the entire manuscript.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I laid out a hypothesis and evidence for a Voynich chronology, showing that Voynich word construction shows drift that is equivalent to stepwise evolutions, that sometimes undo previous results. The methods I used are identical to those used to reconstruct the chronology of Egyptian tombs, by modeling changing pot styles.
If i apply this to my rule/transformation work, and instead of modeling rules that must be true across the entire manuscript, model them as stepwise transitions between each stage, everything falls into place. Frequencies all mostly align between sections, and once large gaps become a series of gradual transitions.
Note that the transformations below are not the result of manually linking individual words. I define a series of transformations that must apply to all words. For example, *ol -> *eol , then *eol-> *edy.
A small set of these rules, about 20 or so, can explain most frequency differences between words across the entire manuscript, when applied in sequence, similar to how linguistic reconstruction models phoneme changes between words.
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At any given step, these rules only capture a small amount of volume, with most words retained.
However, if we actually see how many words remain consistent from start to end, we see an obvious gradual turnover of words. Each step changes a small amount, but over several steps these collectively add up, eventually resulting in large turnover across multiple steps. The chart below shows how many words from each step are retained into subsequent steps. Notice the gradual decline each step. By the end of the sequence, very little is directly retained from 1a.
Worked Examples
The chart below shows the evolution of the word 'chol'. Looking at just Currier A/ Currier B, there appears to be a dramatic gap, with chol appearing to mostly vanish from voynich vocabulary. However, in the chart below, we can actually see chol gradually declining and shifting into other words, not a single large jump. Chols transition into chedy is actually gradual, with its roots in the 1.5 'transitional A' section when it first divides into cheol.
Below shows chor. This also appears like a dramatic jump between Currier A/B, but we can now see that its decline is actually gradual, slowly shifting into competing forms at each step, before finally vanishing in Stars.
Shol, another example.
Note these changes are sometimes undone, for example chol appears to be mostly turned into chedy in 3b, before reverting partially back into chol in 3c. This is consistent with what you would expect from random drift, some changes end up 'undoing' themselves.
The missing sections, and Currier A/B
I strongly suspect that some of the most extreme differences between Currier A/B, like the appearance of the 'ed' bigram, would exhibit gradual changes in the missing bifolia. Already in the above charts, we can see that many of the A/B differences appear to be the results of transformations that began in the 1.5a transitional herbal section, and i expect that specifically missing quires P, R, and H, (f91, f92, f97, f98, f59-f65) would all show a more gradual transition, with 1 of either quire P/R occurring before pharma, and H and the other occurring afterwards. F58 and the cosmo/astro prose collectively represent a small amount of text, but we can already begin to see some of this occurring there.
The question of semantic meaning vs self citation
The above rules do not settle the question of semantic meaning vs self citation. If this linear evolution represents a gradual turnover, with scribes mostly copying existing words, i think it would be unusual for some forms to actually have their frequency mass preserved across the entire chain like this.
For example, if words truly lacked semantic meaning, there would be no reason why chol could not just simply gradually vanish with no replacement. That does not seem to be what is occurring here. Instead, words frequencies are mostly preserved downstream. It's possible some form of self-citation could also do this, but it would have to be fairly complex to preserve information in this way, and in my opinion, at least currently I think this actually points more to an evolution of the script or writing system.
In summary, I don't think there is enough evidence to fully resolve this question at present.
The exact rule changes
The rule changes i am using are all You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., in the rule manager tab. I do not claim this is the full comprehensive set, just that the current set appears to capture most of the drift under a fairly small set of rules. I have no doubt they could be improved. I suspect applying linguistic reconstruction techniques would be a valuable approach. You can actually create and test your own rules on the site.
RE: Voynich words evolve over a linear sequence - JoJo_Jost - 13-10-2026
@ You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Nice work!
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As I've said before, if you look at the structure as a table, you can clearly see that this table structure “evolves.” And that would be typical of a cipher that evolves as it is written—in this case, additional table cells are added because the existing ones are obviously insufficient. Chol’s problem, on the other hand, shows that there was an issue there—perhaps with the back-translation—it was adjusted, and then resurfaced, likely to generate further variety.
So I see it similarly: there is a development.
[And I could even imagine that the entire VMS is a kind of feasibility study for this cipher—and that it consists of several forms that were simply recorded on poor-quality vellum during its development. But of course, that’s just another unverifiable theory
.]
RE: Voynich words evolve over a linear sequence - nablator - 13-10-2026
(5 hours ago)JoJo_Jost wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And that would be typical of a cipher that evolves as it is written—in this case, additional table cells are added because the existing ones are obviously insufficient
But Q13 is more degenerated (devolved) than evolved: less lexical diversity (smallest MATTR).
RE: Voynich words evolve over a linear sequence - JoJo_Jost - 13-10-2026
(5 hours ago)nablator wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Aber Q13 ist degenerierter als weiterentwickelt: weniger Vielfalt, kleinstes MATTR.
Yes, I didn’t explain that correct. Q13, with its extremely high number of “y” spaces, is a special case—which is also one of the reasons why I think they were experimenting here.
For example (I hope I’m allowed to briefly mention this as an example in this context), if these bigrams separated by spaces were supposed to be vowels, then they were encoded using homophones. And in q13 no other variant was chosen - theoretical - so it looks like an experiment...
But even some of the multiple word repetitions (at least in my approach to solving it) seem to be feasibility experiments, even though they could have been used to encrypt entire sentences.
The difference i mention is most clearly seen between Herbal A and B.
Labels behave differently again.
And “Stars” is different again, too — which gives me the impression that it’s the most refined form.
But of course, these are all just “conjectures.”