Biocodicology - A Deeper Dive

[Mark Knowles]

Say a sample is taken and intact DNA is recovered. What happens next in the most optimistic scenario?

If the sample of DNA is a scribe's then that can be sequenced. The degree of degradation of the sample should give some idea of the age of the DNA. If it is not the scribe's then it is not much use unless it is from someone else before the era of Emperor Rudolf II. If it is not from the scribe, but from someone who handled the manuscript 50 years after the writing of the manuscript it still would be of significant interest. Then I speculate that the sequence can be compared against the large database of modern human DNA such as in ancestry databases. So as in the case of the identification of the "Golden State killer" one can identify the closest relatives. The more closely related two people are the longer the sections of DNA that they share. So using such databases one could find the closest modern relatives and descendants. In addition that ought to predict the other descendants of the person in question who aren't on the database, but who can be asked if they would provide their DNA to confirm the theory. (I can't see many people objecting to the use of their DNA to determine whether they are related to the scribe from the Voynich manuscript.) Once we know the closest modern relatives this should give one some guide as to the rough area where the "scribe" came from. In addition if we know who the descendants of the scribe are then maybe as in the case of the "Golden State Killer" we can trace back their common ancestry and so potentially trace back the family tree to the scribe themselves. 600 years is a long way back to trace a family tree, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible. (It is possible that DNA can be taken from ancient bone samples if available from a place where a scribe or their relative is buried to verify common identity or ancestry.) It should be straightforward to determine the gender of the scribe which will help to resolve the question as to whether it was written by a group of women or not. Determining ancestry on the basis of historic records is hard as ancestral records, such as church records, can be incomplete, though in many places they can be quite thorough and are increasingly digitised. If our scribe is someone of some small importance then it should be easier to identify them. Determining from DNA what other characteristics they have might be useful. This is all certainly very optimistic, but from limited knowledge of the subject does not sound impossible. I don't think I need to explain how knowing the identity of the scribe will make a huge difference to Voynich research.