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The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
- The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
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RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
R. Sale > 11-11-2025, 08:50 PM
The best evidence on this matter is the VMs itself, where we can interpret what the illustrations display. Though these points are relatively few, they are significant. Take the 'Cosmic Comparison' as an example with the VMs, BNF Fr. 565 and Harley 334. C-14 and provenance all are dated within 1400-1450. the second and third are from Paris. The VMs is strongly connected to 565 by the 43 undulations [VMs introduces ambiguity.] and secondly connected to 334 by the 'mermaid and her four companions'. Clearly there is a common knowledge and a shared structure, a cosmos from the dated era without planets, only found here. Then, there is so much more.
Does the forger have the right information? -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Jorge_Stolfi > 11-11-2025, 10:55 PM
Rich, I don't think that Voynich's political/revolutionary activities can tell us whether he would dare to commit serious fraud in his business as antiquarian. But on the other hand, what I have read about his deals in that job shows that he was quite capable of that. He clearly had not a bit of scruples about tricking people into selling very valuable books for a pittance. On the contrary, it seems that he was proud of such exploits. I don't see much distance between that and forging provenance or even antiques.
And, as I said before, dishonesty seems to be an almost necessary personality trait for antiquities dealers.
On the third hand, I give practically zero probability to the Modern Forgery Hypothesis.
Not because Voynich would not be capable (morally and technically) of forging and selling an old book: I believe he would.
Not because the external paper trail (catalogs, papers in boxes, letters) excludes that possibility: I believe it does not.
But because of internal evidence.
I can't imagine that Voynich, once he decided to forge a "Bacon Lost Book", or even just any valuable manuscript, would end up creating something like the VMS. Something that has many obscure properties of natural languages, but in other ways it is so unlike any known language. Which has hundreds of illustrations, but not one that would entice a buyer to write a million dollar check.
It would be like the forger of the Vinland map, instead of forging a pre-Columbian map of the Americas, had forged a 13th century floor plan of a house with 217 bathrooms and no kitchen, with a windmill in the cellar and a moat with portcullis around the pangolins's cage in the second floor...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
asteckley > 11-11-2025, 11:42 PM
(11-11-2025, 10:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't imagine that Voynich, once he decided to forge a "Bacon Lost Book", or even just any valuable manuscript, would end up creating something like the VMS. Something that has many obscure properties of natural languages, but in other ways it is so unlike any known language. Which has hundreds of illustrations, but not one that would entice a buyer to write a million dollar check.
It would be like the forger of the Vinland map, instead of forging a pre-Columbian map of the Americas, had forged a 13th century floor plan of a house with 217 bathrooms and no kitchen, with a windmill in the cellar and a moat with portcullis around the pangolins's cage in the second floor...
Yet Baresch was apparently so intrigued with this particular floor plan, that he wouldn't risk letting it out of his sight since he thought it contained exotic medical knowledge. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Battler > 11-11-2025, 11:53 PM
Quote:And, as I said before, dishonesty seems to be an almost necessary personality trait for antiquities dealers.
It basically is. To quote book dealer Dean Corso from the movie The Night Gate: "In my field, to be spoken well of, can be professionally disastrous".
I can actually see Wilfrid Voynich being very similar to the fictional Corso.
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RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Aga Tentakulus > 11-11-2025, 11:58 PM
@Lisa
It should also be taken into account that cattle were significantly smaller back then than they are today.
‘With a withers height of 100 cm to 135 cm, a body weight of 3 to 4 hundredweight and a milk yield of approx. 3 litres/day, meat and milk production was considerably lower than today.’
As calves were also smaller, there was probably less parchment.
"Preserved St. Gall parchments from the 8th to 10th centuries: these consist of approximately 40% sheep and goat skins and approximately 20% calf skins. Each calf skin yielded one, at most two, double sheets of parchment (bifolia); accordingly, an average herd had to give its life for a single codex.
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Translated with DeepL.com (free version) -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Jorge_Stolfi > 12-11-2025, 01:16 AM
(11-11-2025, 11:58 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.an average herd had to give its life for a single codex.
That is a "clickbait" way to put it. But was the demand for parchment (and leather) high enough to justify raising cattle just for their skins?
I would assume that sheep and calves were raised and slaughtered primarily for meat, milk, and wool. Leather and parchment must have been incidental byproducts. I bet that there were many more skins available than these two industries could consume. Is this true?
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Aga Tentakulus > 12-11-2025, 02:19 AM
Of course, there was no breeding solely for hides; that would be utter nonsense.
It wasn't like today, where a vet quickly inseminates 20 cows in the barn in the morning. Gestation period: 1 year.
But the same still applies. Female calves go into dairy farming and males into meat fattening. Fattening in the second year of life.
Now it's like this. During the first winter, the mother animal feeds her young through the winter with her milk. In the second winter, enough hay must be stored for all the animals. Therefore, the slaughter time in the second year was mainly just before winter.
That is, and was, the normal procedure. Certainly not just because of parchment.
Record from around 1400. City of Salzburg approx. 20,000 inhabitants, meat requirement for cattle, 8 animals per day.
Calculate
Addendum:
Perhaps I should mention that this generally applies to regions where snow falls in winter. Unfortunately, I don't know about southern Italy or even Spain, etc. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
LisaFaginDavis > 12-11-2025, 02:50 AM
@Aga: those St. Gall manuscripts are nearly all going to be essentially twice the height and width of the Voynich, so two (or four) bifolia per skin is perfectly reasonable. Eight would be extremely unlikely for such large manuscripts. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
Aga Tentakulus > 12-11-2025, 03:12 AM
Thanks, Lisa.
Good to know and to take into account the different sizes of the books.
I hadn't thought of that. -
RE: The Modern Forgery Hypothesis
proto57 > 17-11-2025, 03:29 PM
(11-11-2025, 10:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rich, I don't think that Voynich's political/revolutionary activities can tell us whether he would dare to commit serious fraud in his business as antiquarian. But on the other hand, what I have read about his deals in that job shows that he was quite capable of that. He clearly had not a bit of scruples about tricking people into selling very valuable books for a pittance. On the contrary, it seems that he was proud of such exploits. I don't see much distance between that and forging provenance or even antiques.
And, as I said before, dishonesty seems to be an almost necessary personality trait for antiquities dealers.
On the third hand, I give practically zero probability to the Modern Forgery Hypothesis.
Not because Voynich would not be capable (morally and technically) of forging and selling an old book: I believe he would.
Not because the external paper trail (catalogs, papers in boxes, letters) excludes that possibility: I believe it does not.
I agree that none of the "paper trail" excludes forgery. It has been an uphill battle to explain this to people, because the popular belief is that, for instance, there IS a "paper trail" clearly showing the Voynich existed in the 15th century. It is not true. Any of the available records are at best very thin, and at worst work against the Voynich existing in the past, at all.
Yet it is often related that we "know" the Voynich is genuine, and old, based on "the evidence". In fact I have been rejected by Histocrypt twice on the basis that there is "overwhelming provenance from the 15th century", when everyone here... whatever their belief about the Voynich, and whatever they think of the Carteggio mentions as evidence or not... knows full well there is actually zero "15th century provenance". Maybe that screener was making a simple mistake in definition, and had confused the C14 test results with provenance (of course they are entirely different), but I think it was worse than that: They just don't know. They hear and read the unfounded claim that we "know" the Voynich is from that era, and so, mistakenly believe that provenance must exist from then. Ironically this caused, in my case, and probably others, to stop my ability to speak about the real situation, what we really do know, and what we don't know.
It is a vicious cycle: Opinions stating 1420 and genuine are given as facts; others repeat and believe they are facts, and not just opinions; then any information, opinions or facts to the contrary will not be heard; and the next group of people only hear and then believe "Opinions stating 1420 and genuine" are facts. Round and around it goes.
Quote:But because of internal evidence.
Well we will disagree here, and do, because I feel the opposite: That the internal evidence overwhelmingly points to modern, or forgery, or both. Here's the thing: All of the dismissals of the many anachronisms and anomalies are rejected, primarily on the basis (paraphrasing), that, "We know the Voynich must be 1420 and genuine, so this problem and that problem are added later, or not what people think they are".
To counter that, I argue each of the many cases... or, when I argue several, the response it to cherry pick one of them, and try to rebut that. But the thing is, for old and genuine to be correct, each and every one of them must be incorrect. So I intend on creating a master list of these issues (I'll post it here when I finish it), and making that point. One cannot respond to such a list and say, for instance, "Well the armadillo is a pangolin", while ignoring two dozen, or more, other plants, animals, styles, characters, techniques, construction methods, materials, elements and compounds, and on and on.
Each and every one of these serious problems must have a rational and satisfactory answer, because if even one of them is not explained away, then the Voynich is either post-Columbian, or more modern, and probably fake. That is, my theory is not based on every point of evidence I use being correct, and does not need to be, logically, to be correct. It is, instead, and overwhelming circumstantial case, which, at the same time, only really needs one or a few elements of it to be correct, for it to be 100% correct.
Quote:I can't imagine that Voynich, once he decided to forge a "Bacon Lost Book", or even just any valuable manuscript, would end up creating something like the VMS. Something that has many obscure properties of natural languages, but in other ways it is so unlike any known language. Which has hundreds of illustrations, but not one that would entice a buyer to write a million dollar check.
It would be like the forger of the Vinland map, instead of forging a pre-Columbian map of the Americas, had forged a 13th century floor plan of a house with 217 bathrooms and no kitchen, with a windmill in the cellar and a moat with portcullis around the pangolins's cage in the second floor...
But think of what you wrote in this context: As an explanation as to why nobody bought it. I think you are correct, and whatever Wilfrid hoped for the book... how he may have wanted it to be perceived, what he hoped to sell it for, and so on... he failed miserably.
Put another way, I often hear is said what an amazing creation the Voynich is, and that therefore no one would have made a forgery like this, putting all that time and effort and skill and money into making it; but then, on the other hand, it is so poor that he would have done a better job, if a forgery, after putting all that time and money and so on, into it...
The two may actually be true to some extent... he could have done a better job, and a worse job in some ways... but none of that matters now. The Voynich is stuck in a strange limbo... not good enough to be known to be real, not bad enough to have definitive clues to give it away as an obvious forgery. So I actually think it very similar, in concept and execution, to your parody alternative, "... forged a 13th century floor plan of a house with 217 bathrooms and no kitchen, with a windmill in the cellar and a moat with portcullis around the pangolins's cage in the second floor...".
I mean, I see it that way, as a mess. A jumble of styles from several centuries, made with the wrong materials, from the wrong eras, that is only accepted as old or genuine on the basis that people want it to be old and genuine, and who then incorrectly state "we know" it is old and genuine.
Rich