10-10-2026, 06:27 AM
I just watched Lisa's talk "The Materiality of the Voynich Manuscript" ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) where she hints at the VMS as originally unbound assembly of singulions, and... I feel a bit blown away by the implications.
Wouldn't this discovery (if confirmed) directly contradict the assumption of the C14 report? If the analysis starts with the assumption (not: result) that all samples came from a single work, it should probably be re-done without that assumption, right? If the VMS was first assembled as stack of loose singulions, it very well could have been a multigenerational family/clan project, or a work that was extended by several authors ("hands") over the course of decades.
Like, let's say, a scriptorium handing out damaged vellum sheets so the apprentice can copy out arbitrary drawings from old books and won't ruin customer's commissions with their unlearned hand. After some years the boss monk has a stack of low-quality pastiches and scribbles done by different apprentices over the course of some years, and adds the text as practical joke or income source. Such a theory is easily testable, but it absolutely requires more than four data points to rule it out with any certainty.
Wouldn't this discovery (if confirmed) directly contradict the assumption of the C14 report? If the analysis starts with the assumption (not: result) that all samples came from a single work, it should probably be re-done without that assumption, right? If the VMS was first assembled as stack of loose singulions, it very well could have been a multigenerational family/clan project, or a work that was extended by several authors ("hands") over the course of decades.
Like, let's say, a scriptorium handing out damaged vellum sheets so the apprentice can copy out arbitrary drawings from old books and won't ruin customer's commissions with their unlearned hand. After some years the boss monk has a stack of low-quality pastiches and scribbles done by different apprentices over the course of some years, and adds the text as practical joke or income source. Such a theory is easily testable, but it absolutely requires more than four data points to rule it out with any certainty.