08-02-2026, 07:17 PM
I appreciate your response, and to be clear i'm coming at this from a fresh perspective, not anti-your theory or pro any other. I'm sure i'm rehashing plenty of points that have been discussed before, but at this point that applies to almost everything. There's always a chance that something has been missed.
I agree that if someone has access to 500,000 items that it's not exactly crazy that they would indeed have access to a few large pieces of parchment.
In the 1000s of documents in the libraries in the world, are there not other examples of completely unique documents? Two questions that are worth asking ourselves may be:
1) How many truly unique -or almost unique- works existed in say, the 15th century? Tens, hundreds, thousands?
2) What is the approximate survival rate of a given work from the 15th century? 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000?
I'm not asking for a specific/technical answer -unless you have one ready of course- but instead to gauge how reasonable these things are. If there were only 100 such works that existed, and the rate of survival for a work is 1/1000, statistically we wouldn't even expect to find another. In such a case, it's entirely reasonable to take the stance that we may never find another, or that we may hope to find another eventually.
In addition to this, I suppose I don't agree that the foldouts being unique constitutes an anachronism. Again, if there were only 100 examples of anyone ever doing this type of foldout, and the rate of survival is 1/1000, we may never find another example of it, and that wouldn't be unexpected or suspicious at all.
If the opposite is true and the amount of unique works is in the 1000s, and survival rate is 1/100, I would be far more open to it being considered anachronistic as we should have expected to find another by now.
What i mean is that in order to do any of the things that i mentioned, the forger would clearly require some knowledge of old manuscripts, which would include the fact that none of them include foldouts. Effort was put to put things in that are many centuries old. I personally find the quire numbering interesting; the only reason you would use those forms would be if you had seen them, yet they are not extremely common.
Of course there are many other reasons to include such foldouts in a forgery, such as to induce a sense of mystery. To me that's more likely than a mistake.
(08-02-2026, 05:54 PM)proto57 wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.First of all, Voynich himself was surrounded by mountains of materials of all types, estimated to be over 500,000 items:
I agree that if someone has access to 500,000 items that it's not exactly crazy that they would indeed have access to a few large pieces of parchment.
(08-02-2026, 05:54 PM)proto57 wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the cumulative effect should be, must be: The Voynich is not normal for its time, nor for any time. We can't, I mean, base our opinions on negative, missing, evidence, when it is not one or two instances, but in virtually every instance.
In the 1000s of documents in the libraries in the world, are there not other examples of completely unique documents? Two questions that are worth asking ourselves may be:
1) How many truly unique -or almost unique- works existed in say, the 15th century? Tens, hundreds, thousands?
2) What is the approximate survival rate of a given work from the 15th century? 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000?
I'm not asking for a specific/technical answer -unless you have one ready of course- but instead to gauge how reasonable these things are. If there were only 100 such works that existed, and the rate of survival for a work is 1/1000, statistically we wouldn't even expect to find another. In such a case, it's entirely reasonable to take the stance that we may never find another, or that we may hope to find another eventually.
In addition to this, I suppose I don't agree that the foldouts being unique constitutes an anachronism. Again, if there were only 100 examples of anyone ever doing this type of foldout, and the rate of survival is 1/1000, we may never find another example of it, and that wouldn't be unexpected or suspicious at all.
If the opposite is true and the amount of unique works is in the 1000s, and survival rate is 1/100, I would be far more open to it being considered anachronistic as we should have expected to find another by now.
(08-02-2026, 05:54 PM)proto57 wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't, first of all, agree that all of your cases are signs of "getting it right", but more importantly, you leave out the great many cases of anomalous and anachronistic content in making your point.
What i mean is that in order to do any of the things that i mentioned, the forger would clearly require some knowledge of old manuscripts, which would include the fact that none of them include foldouts. Effort was put to put things in that are many centuries old. I personally find the quire numbering interesting; the only reason you would use those forms would be if you had seen them, yet they are not extremely common.
Of course there are many other reasons to include such foldouts in a forgery, such as to induce a sense of mystery. To me that's more likely than a mistake.