No text, but a visual code

[Jorge_Stolfi]

A mysterious European traveler who spent years in an Asian country

Again, there are many documented cases of that happening before 1400.  In general, we know of each of those cases because of a single manuscript that survived by chance, like a letter from a missionary to a bishop that was preserved in Church archives.  We know about Marco Polo's travels and deeds only because he happened to share a prison cell with a writer.   Merchants usually did not keep diaries or write reports to anyone.

When Vasco da Gama first reached southwest India by sailing around Africa, he was surprised to find an European from Poland living there, with some high status in the Court. 

In the 1500s, Jesuit Matteo Ricci was surprised when a Chinese man walked into his newly set up church in mainland China, pointed to a picture of the Virgin Mary, and said "I know her, she is Esther, right?".  It turns out that he was a member of a Jewish community in Western China, founded by a Jewish missionary. Their rabbi had died, and the faithful were upset because no one could read the Hebrew Scriptures.  But the man heard that, many miles to the East, there was this other foreign priest who spoke of Abraham and Moses etc.  So he went there, to ask Matteo whether he would come with him and be their rabbi.

How many other Europeans might have been living in Asia, like those -- whose existence was lost because they were not met by any official expedition or mission from Europe?

Someone dictated their contents to him, and he invented a new writing system to record it phonetically. Upon returning to his country, he asked someone to copy it...

Well, which part of that does not make sense?

It seems like a good script for an Indiana Jones movie.

As Mark Twain noted, "the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction must be plausible."

Didn't it occur to this mysterious traveler, during all that time, to make drawings of the oriental medicinal plants that he was told about and that they would surely show him?

Well, what is your explanation for the Pharma section?

If I see female figures with their feet and hands inside tubes, I have to ask myself what that means; I have to try to give an answer.

As I wrote, on European Medieval manuscripts most of the details of the images are just decoration provided by the artists.  Often the whole image is just, well, imaginary.  

The description of the Tower of Babel in the Bible is just this

• ... they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there ... "... let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. ... “... let us build ...a tower with its top in the heavens ..."
  

That is all.  Now look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., an check how much of that image is meaningful information about the "actual" tower, as reported in the Bible, and how much is just made up by the artist.  In that painting, even the river was totally invented by Brueghel. 

As for the nymphs with feet in tubs, I have a proposed explanation but it is in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....


All the best, --stolfi