Distinguishing Characters

[Mark Knowles]

it is simple enough to have been invented independently.

And yet from my understanding you are saying it was only invented once in history in the case of the Voynich manuscript.

If it is simple enough to not need any historical precedent/influence and therefore in some sense outside of history then I would have thought it would have been invented multiple times in different places and historical periods.

I am always very suspicious if someone states that something emerged independently of history. I got quite interested in the history and evolution of the steam engine; when one looks into it one discovers that there were many intermediate people and steps in the emergence of this technology that one has no idea about in the standard history i.e. which is normally told just as it was invented by James Watt.