The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[Mark Knowles]

I said prior to the carbon dating the likelihood that it was a fake seemed significantly greater to me than it does now. That was for the simple reason that unusual historical documents sometimes turn out to be fake, so that could be a possibility in this case. The carbon dating, however, swings the pendulum firmly into the "not a fake" category. Scientific dating techniques tend to be much more reliable and rigourous as they are based in hard physical science than the various speculations of people who considers themselves "experts" on the subject.

Carbon dating is hard evidence that the parchment is old. As evidence that the manuscript is authentic, it’s about as weak as it gets.

The Vinland Map parchment was carbon dated to ~1434 — basically the same time as the Voynich parchment. Didn’t stop it from being a total fake. So no, a matching carbon date doesn’t “swing the pendulum” anywhere. If anything, it should make you a little less impressed by the pendulum metaphor.

So, you appear to be saying that we should ignore the dating of all the objects dated by carbon dating as unreliable.

What about the dating of Gobekli Tepe, the Antikythera Mechanism, the body of Richard III and so very many others?