The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I believe if the MS-408 were Chinese or an Asian dialect than the glyphs would have had numerous representations.

What do you mean?

Also the nymphs don't look Asian.

This is a common off-hand reaction to the Chinese Origin theory.  

But Beinecke MS 408 was almost certainly not written straight brain-to-vellum.  The Author of the VMS (who probably was European, or at least not Chinese) must have composed a draft on paper, with rough sketches of the drawings, and then recruited a Scribe to copy that draft to vellum and flesh out the details of the drawings.  

The Scribe was almost certainly European, and this last step most likely happened in Europe. We now know that many details on several diagrams were (badly) copied from other European books that were popular at the time.  Thus any features of the drawings that are clearly European -- like the dresses, Zodiac signs, and some castles -- could be contributions of the Author and/or the Scribe; not copied from the Chinese source book(s). 

--All the best, --stolfi