5 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 5 hours ago by BrianCham1994.)
Good work. Before I last left the field, I wanted to investigate this same pattern, to verify the evolution and "replacement rules" for words and glyph combos across the manuscript.
My working hypothesis was that text was generated/encrypted using paper volvelles (note the plural). These would inevitably wear out and literally fall apart from repeated rotations, so these would be replaced by new volvelles. These new volvelles would still satisfy the original system, but would not necessarily have the exact same glyphs/combos. Thus, there would be abrupt points where certain words and glyph combos would disappear, appear or change frequency.
For example (just a toy example, not realistic):
Volvelle 1 has:
Where ___ means a blank space.
This can give you words like daiin, dain, aiin, qodaiin, qotaiin, etc.
Volvelle 2 has:
This gives you words like chedy, shedy, qochedy, oshedy, y, etc.
Text is generated using volvelles 1 and 2 simultaneously to make words (realistically there'd be about five volvelles at any given time).
Then volvelle 1 wears out and is replaced by volvelle 1b, which is similar but not the same:
Ring 1 only has "o" and no longer has "qo".
Ring 2 has "k" and "d", and no longer has "t".
This can give you words like daiin, dain, kaiin, okaiin, etc.
So in this hypothetical example, the effect of the replacement is:
If this volvelle replacement keeps happening across the manuscript, the gradual turnover of combos and words would accumulate to the point where most of the "vocabulary" shifts into another vocabulary.
So, the questions I wanted to investigate:
If I actually had the capacity to look into those, I would have also published it alongside the justification of why I thought this was the most suitable mechanism in the first place, that is, multiple (around five) simultaneous four-ringed volvelles with alternating blank spaces. As well as a potential cipher that exploits this. Maybe you can do something better with the idea than I can.
My working hypothesis was that text was generated/encrypted using paper volvelles (note the plural). These would inevitably wear out and literally fall apart from repeated rotations, so these would be replaced by new volvelles. These new volvelles would still satisfy the original system, but would not necessarily have the exact same glyphs/combos. Thus, there would be abrupt points where certain words and glyph combos would disappear, appear or change frequency.
For example (just a toy example, not realistic):
Volvelle 1 has:
- Ring 1 (outer): qo, __, o, __, qo, __, o, etc.
- Ring 2 (next one in): t, __, d, __, t, __, d, __, t, etc.
- Ring 3: ai, __, ai__, ai, __, ai, __, ai, etc.
- Ring 4: in, n, in, n, in, etc.
Where ___ means a blank space.
This can give you words like daiin, dain, aiin, qodaiin, qotaiin, etc.
Volvelle 2 has:
- Ring 1: qo, __, o, __, qo, __, o, etc.
- Ring 2: ch, __, sh, __, ch, __, sh, __, etc.
- Ring 3: ee, __, e, __, ee, __, e, etc.
- Ring 4: dy, y, dy, y, dy, y, etc.
This gives you words like chedy, shedy, qochedy, oshedy, y, etc.
Text is generated using volvelles 1 and 2 simultaneously to make words (realistically there'd be about five volvelles at any given time).
Then volvelle 1 wears out and is replaced by volvelle 1b, which is similar but not the same:
- Ring 1 (outer): o, __, o, __, o, __, o, etc.
- Ring 2 (next one in): k, __, d, __, k, __, d, __, k, etc.
- Ring 3: ai, __, ai__, ai, __, ai, __, ai, etc.
- Ring 4: in, n, in, n, in, etc.
Ring 1 only has "o" and no longer has "qo".
Ring 2 has "k" and "d", and no longer has "t".
This can give you words like daiin, dain, kaiin, okaiin, etc.
So in this hypothetical example, the effect of the replacement is:
- Words like "qotaiin" suddenly disappear because they only appeared in volvelle 1 which was destroyed.
- Words like "okaiin" suddenly appear because they were newly introduced by volvelle 1b and did not exist before.
- The net effect of appearances/disappearances make it look as if there's a transformation from "ot-" prefix to "ok-" prefix for the same words before and after.
- Words like "odaiin" appear in both volvelle 1 and volvelle 1b, but the frequency increases because it's slightly more likely to arise after the replacement (more "o-" slots in volvelle 1b).
- Words generated by volvelle 2 like "chedy" keep appearing at the same frequency, at least until volvelle 2 wears out and gets replaced by a volvelle 2b.
If this volvelle replacement keeps happening across the manuscript, the gradual turnover of combos and words would accumulate to the point where most of the "vocabulary" shifts into another vocabulary.
So, the questions I wanted to investigate:
- Are there systematic transformations happening across the manuscript? (the question you answered here)
- If so, are there multiple transformations happening simultaneously at abrupt points in time?
- If so, can we work backwards from those shifts to reverse-engineer what the volvelles looked like before and after these shifts?
If I actually had the capacity to look into those, I would have also published it alongside the justification of why I thought this was the most suitable mechanism in the first place, that is, multiple (around five) simultaneous four-ringed volvelles with alternating blank spaces. As well as a potential cipher that exploits this. Maybe you can do something better with the idea than I can.