Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

The critters in the VMS are not drawn well enough to identify most of them. Plus, it was the custom at the time to draw many mythical animals  or "generic" animals that were not intended to be any particular animal. You can't assume what they are just because you want to place them in the context of a North American swamp. Besides, even if it were swamp water, there are swamps all over Europe too, including in some of the hotter regions.

I've now received permission from the copyright owner (source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) to post his photo of the marsh deer in this forum:



I see similarities in the following areas:

1) the upright ears rising from the back of the head. Cows, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, mules, etc do not have ears that look like that.

2) the black coloring of the lower legs seen in both depictions.

3) a short dark tail which in both cases extends from a protruding rear end.

Note that, in the VMS, this animal is depicted immediately above one of the naked swamp girls, that is, there is reason to suspect it's an animal that liked to live in or near swamps as is precisely the case with the marsh deer.

This might be a good time to have a second look at the armadillo, another animal that liked to live in or near swamps:



Right after I wrote for permission on the marsh deer, I noticed that the very same website had photos of armadillos that did not have ostentatious bands.

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It also has photos of armadillos rolled up into a ball, which the VMS armadillo seems to be in the process of doing. Many species of armadillo have become extinct in North America since medieval times and, like the marsh deer, a few of them still survive in South America.

Your counterclaim is that a scaly animal has been found to exist in central Africa and also in China. Since you have provided no evidence at all that such an animal was known in Europe during the Middle Ages, I view your counterclaim as sheer demagoguery, not as science.

In order to convince people on your Made-in-Europe theory, you really should provide a smoking gun, that is, you need to demonstrate that the pictorial content of the VMS reflects awareness of European history or European culture for the period ranging from 1244 CE (the date of destruction of the depicted fortress) to 1438 CE (the end of the radiocarbon range).

Examples of a smoking gun could include a depiction of the Black Death that wiped out half the population of Europe in the 14th century (indeed one might expect to see such a thing in a manuscript that includes a chapter on herbal medicine!), or perhaps a depiction of new European inventions like the gunpowder cannon, or even a depiction of any king or pope of that epoch. The lack of a smoking gun does not prove you wrong, but neither does it prove the Made-in-the-Americas theory to be wrong.