A One-Page Ledger Method for Generating Voynich-Like Text

[Jorge_Stolfi]

“They didn’t know statistics.” - They did not need formal probability theory. Repetitive human copy-mutate behavior can naturally generate language-like statistical structure without mathematical understanding (again, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

"Why fool people with language-like properties if nobody could measure them?” - Medieval cryptographers absolutely knew what ordinary ciphers looked like, and Voynichese does not resemble a normal substitution cipher or shorthand system. The goal may have been plausibility without easy detection as either plain language or conventional cipher.

AFAIK 1420-Medieval is quite different than 1520-Medieval on this point.   Cryptography became a "science" on its own only around 1500.

But that does not matter much. Was the VMS meant to look like cipher, or an exotic natural language in the plain? 

If it was meant to look like cipher, there would be no need to worry about word frequencies, word structures, etc.  Any random sequence of glyphs would do.

If it was meant to look like an exotic natural language in the plain, why did the Author bother to make the hidden statistics seem natural, while making the most visible features -- the complex and rigid word structure and the repetitiousness  -- look so un-natural?

People love the mysterious.  It's one of the reasons we're all here.

But the VMS did not look particularly valuable for most of its documented history.  Baresch was somewhat obsessed with it, but none of the people around him mentioned the VMS, until they were prompted by Baresch to write to Kircher about it.  Then Kircher apparently did nothing with it, and for ~200 years it sat in the library of the Collegio Romano / PUG, where it did not seem to have attracted any special attention (except perhaps some ketchup stains).  It became famous in the 20th century only because Wilfrid tried to sell it as a Bacon original.

Look at the lengths to which people TODAY go to in order to scam others out of money. I cannot believe that the 15th century was any different in that regard.

That is true, and surely there were many fraudulent manuscripts being made and sold back then.  The now-called You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be considered an instance of that.  

But forgeries have a logic.  To make the investment and risk worthwhile, the forger will try to maximize the attractiveness of the work to potential buyers.  A painting forger will try to produce a fake that looks like a Rembrandt, a Pollock, a Van Gogh, or at least the work of some minor known painter; not the work of a pensioner who just watched a couple of Bob Ross videos.  A book forger will go for Hitler's diaries, not for the ledger of a lumber shop in Peoria.  A document forger will try the map of Vinland, not a sketch of the street plan of a suburb of Kotěhůlky. 

And the VMS does not look at all like that.  Its 240 pages are 240 missed opportunities to make the work more appealing to the alleged targets of the scam -- whether they were rich nobles, scholars, physicians, alchemists...

All the best, --stolfi