The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[Mark Knowles]

I mean, I see it that way, as a mess. A jumble of styles from several centuries, made with the wrong materials, from the wrong eras, that is only accepted as old or genuine on the basis that people want it to be old and genuine, and who then incorrectly state "we know" it is old and genuine.

Rich

To me the simple point is that what you suggest could be approached like the "Voynich manuscript was written by an alien" hypothesis. I don't know for certain that it wasn't written by a visiting alien. I can't prove that it wasn't written by a visiting alien. However I think is so unlikely to be the case that I don't waste my time with that hypothesis.

Ultimately at core the carbon dating of the vellum seems to provide a strong reason to accept the dating and the counter arguments that you have presented to the dating seem flimsy by comparison. Voynich had no knowledge of carbon dating and so no reason to collect a large amount of 15th century vellum to support a fake dating. You can doubt the effective dating of the myriad of other objects dated using carbon dating. I spent some days browsing through 15th century letters in the Milan State Archives in February. Are you telling me that they are probably all fake too? What about all the other supposed objects dated by carbon dating are they all fake? What about all the other 15th century manuscripts? It seems to me that the core motivation for claiming the Voynich to be a fake is that we can't read it and if it were really 15th century supposedly we would be able to read it by now; I don’t think that is necessarily the case.