Morten St. George > 01-02-2018, 03:23 AM
(31-01-2018, 06:08 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Note that I'm not scoffing at the length of your system (the number of words to encode a letter) as I know of several Renaissance encoding systems that used even longer cipher text, amongst them one of Kircher's universal language attempts.
However, unless you can find a flag indicating the 'ratio' all you're doing is introducing noise; and changing the rules of the game on the fly to meet objections.
Morten St. George > 04-02-2018, 04:07 PM
(31-01-2018, 06:08 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Note that I'm not scoffing at the length of your system (the number of words to encode a letter) as I know of several Renaissance encoding systems that used even longer cipher text, amongst them one of Kircher's universal language attempts.
However, unless you can find a flag indicating the 'ratio' all you're doing is introducing noise; and changing the rules of the game on the fly to meet objections.
Koen G > 04-02-2018, 04:15 PM
Morten St. George > 06-02-2018, 05:02 AM
(04-02-2018, 04:15 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It doesn't have to be Italian monks. In fact one could think of quite some arguments against monks. For starters, the manuscript shows only two or three signs that its makers were even aware of Christianity. And its production does not conform to the standards of established scriptorium practices. But this does not mean we have to fudge the evidence and turn to the new world. There are a million other options.
-JKP- > 06-02-2018, 05:22 AM
Quote:Morten St George:
"...the answer is not to deny the VMS depictions of a New World rainforest (for which the evidence is overwhelming),"
Morten St. George > 06-02-2018, 07:10 PM
(06-02-2018, 05:22 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:Morten St George:
"...the answer is not to deny the VMS depictions of a New World rainforest (for which the evidence is overwhelming),"
Each ecosystem adapts itself in a specific way and when you get really good at knowing plants, you can glance at an unfamiliar group of plants and, with a fairly good degree of certainty, guess the kind of ecology (sometimes even the specific area) from where they come. Alpine and northern plants are distinct from Mediterranean plants in many ways.
This also holds true for isolated gene pools.
I spent many months studying the VMS plants before I started IDing them. The overall morphology of those plants is not New World rainforest plants.
-JKP- > 06-02-2018, 10:20 PM
Quote:Morten St George: It’s nice that someone was able to verify that none of the 40,000 plant species found in the Amazon rainforest look like any of the plants depicted in the VMS.
Morten St. George > 07-02-2018, 08:05 AM
(06-02-2018, 10:20 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:Morten St George: It’s nice that someone was able to verify that none of the 40,000 plant species found in the Amazon rainforest look like any of the plants depicted in the VMS.
Now you are twisting my words.
But I will stand by my statement that the overall morphology of the VMS plants (taken as a whole) is not consistent with Amazon rainforest plants.
Nor do I think they are extinct plants (except perhaps a small minority).
The form of viola shown in the VMS is not an Amazon rainforest plant. The flower, the layout of the stalks, and the shape of the leaves is characteristic of temperate-zone violas (both New and Old World, but most of those that fit most closely are native to the Old Word).
Ricinus (which is a probable ID) is a eurasian plant.
Cannabis (which is not a definite ID, but it's a likely one) is a eurasian plant.
Tragopogon is a Eurasian plant.
The form of Menyanthes or Vallarsia in the VMS is both New World and Old World, depending on which one it is (they look almost the same, so it's almost impossible to distinguish them from a drawing). In the Old World, they are mostly in SW and W Asia and SE Europe, but in the New World, they're not native to the Amazon rainforest, they are from the Gulf region.
The plants in the VMS that might be related to the Lilium family are more similar to Old World Lilium than those in the Amazon rainforest.
Every ecosystem has plants with a certain look-and-feel because they have adapted to local moisture levels, winds, soil conditions, and altitudes. Even if the same plant can be found in different zones or at different altitudes, there are important differences in how it grows (e.g., alpine plants are rarely tall like those from rainforests or from lower elevations).
The VMS plants aren't even all from the same place (e.g., if the one that looks like Ricinus is Ricinus, it is frost-tender and can't grow in cold climates, but some of the other plants can) but they do, as a group, show more similarity to temperate-zone plants than to subtropical/tropical plants. Every medieval herbal has a few "exotics" (plants or spices that were imported).
In fact, I'll make a prediction here that not only are they NOT all (or mostly) extinct plants, but the majority I believe will be found to be common plants.
-JKP- > 07-02-2018, 09:57 AM
(07-02-2018, 08:05 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
I've heard that the Italian protozoa animal on folio 2v is actually an American tropical plant called Nymphoides aquatica. It grows on the surface of swamp water and no doubt this is what gives the green color to the water in the biology section.
There seems to be little doubt that the real nymphs are plants and not Italian nuns: the nymph plant has a stem like the one depicted in the VMS and, above all, it sprouts out a white flower exactly as depicted in the VMS. It's an open and shut case on ID. This plant currently lives on the north side of the Caribbean. Whether or not it also lived on the south side of the Caribbean during medieval times remains to be determined.
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Morten St. George > 08-02-2018, 04:52 AM
(07-02-2018, 09:57 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(07-02-2018, 08:05 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
I've heard that the Italian protozoa animal on folio 2v is actually an American tropical plant called Nymphoides aquatica. It grows on the surface of swamp water and no doubt this is what gives the green color to the water in the biology section.
There seems to be little doubt that the real nymphs are plants and not Italian nuns: the nymph plant has a stem like the one depicted in the VMS and, above all, it sprouts out a white flower exactly as depicted in the VMS. It's an open and shut case on ID. This plant currently lives on the north side of the Caribbean. Whether or not it also lived on the south side of the Caribbean during medieval times remains to be determined.
...
Well didn't I say Menyanthes/Villarsia upthread? Nymphoides aquatica is Menyanthaceae, the New World version. Villarsia is the Old World version.
The Asian species (especially from west India) is almost identical to the New World version that grows in the Gulf (the one I previously mentioned), and there is no way to tell from a picture whether it is the New World version or the Old World version. They look the same, even in very good botanical drawings, which the VMS is not.
So it is clearly not an open-and-shut case when almost identical plants (which they used to think were the same species) grow in both the New World Gulf and Old World Asia.