Secrets of the Voynich Manuscript

hey quick announcement the channel now has official merch head on to crowdmade.com using the link in the description or through the pin to comment okay on with the [Music] video when it comes to strange books the voynich manuscript is in a league of its own this 15th century text is full of weird drawings from alien plants with no biological counterpart to miniature people operating an array of unknown machines and then there's the writing it's composed in a mystery language complete with a unique alphabet and grammar to this day no one has definitively cracked this ancient code although there are some out there who claim otherwise the voynich manuscript is perhaps the most discussed book of all time and there are countless theories about his meaning origin and purpose let's investigate the world's most mysterious book and explore the secrets of the voynich manuscript [Music] the official name of this book is beineckey ms-408 although it's better known as the voynich manuscript it's named after mr wilfred voynich an antique collector who purchased the book in 1912. after his death it was donated to the beinecke rare book and manuscript library at yale university where it resides to this day it's rarely shown to the public although a digital version is available to view online if you're lucky enough to see the voynich manuscript in person you'll notice that it's actually rather small and a little bit worse for wear but don't judge a book by its cover inside it's full of weird illustrations from alien plants to cryptic star charts and bathing women in a variety of strange poses the manuscript is full of writing with text made to fit around the drawings the problem is no one can actually read it old manuscripts are hard to read at the best of times but the voynich brand script is written in a mystery language complete with an unknown alphabet the writing is undoubtedly the most talked about aspect of this book and has kept code breakers puzzled for centuries it's believed that the voynich manuscript is medieval in origin and the text images and style look characteristically european if we are to unravel the secrets of this book we want to know more about where it came from who wrote it who did it belong to and most importantly could it be a hoax our story starts with wilfred voynich after whom the manuscript is named after voynich was a rare book dealer who made a living buying and selling manuscripts from his office in london how he fell into the possession of the famous manuscript is shrouded in mystery he apparently purchased it in 1912 from the college of jesuits in rome the college had fallen on hard financial times and had agreed to sell their collection of books to the vatican the voynich manuscript was one of those items due to be sold but for some unknown reason 30 of these manuscripts ended up in the hands of wilfrid voynich we don't know how this transaction took place although some say he stole them ill-gotten or not wilfred voynich's new manuscript was unlike any in his collection he was enamored by its contents and the promise of secrets therein the voynich manuscript as it came to be known attracted some of the greatest minds of the time this includes william friedman a master code breaker who famously solved purple a cipher used by the japanese in world war ii friedman spent much of his free time trying to solve this manuscript but after four decades of attempts he was unable to decode it after voynich's death the book was eventually sold to a fellow dealer who then donated it to yale university in 1969 there are those who believe that the voynich manuscript is a hoax an elaborate fake created by voynich himself after all he was never clear about its origin knowing what he did about old books could he have fabricated it himself claims of forgery used to dominate the discussion of the voynich manuscript this was until 2009 when samples of the book were taken to be carbon dated the results came back manuscript comes from the early 15th century specifically between 1404 to 1438. what's more the type of ink and the binding techniques used are also consistent with this era despite this some raise the possibility that a carbon dating test can be cheated say you have a blank medieval parchment lying about it's possible to add the writing at a later date this happens a lot with the dead sea scrolls every year one or two manuscript fragments are proven to be fakes however the voynich manuscript is not a tiny scrap of paper it's a complete book it's highly unlikely that there was just this empty medieval tome lying about waiting to be written on no nowadays the voynich manuscript is widely believed to be genuine there's another reason why this book is not a hoax people have known about it for centuries you see when wilfred voynich bought the book it came with a letter [Music] dated on the 19th of august 1665 the letter belonged to one johannes markey a scientist who lived in prague it was addressed to athanasius kirkum a colleague of his the letter discusses our strange book saying that quote as soon as it came into my possession i was convinced that it could be read by no one except yourself he then mentions how it was once owned by emperor rudolf ii who had bought the book for a great deal of money according to the letter the author was roger bacon an english philosopher and scientist from the 13th century bacon is especially known for his opus mages a treatise on everything from grammar to alchemy could the voynich manuscript be his long-last almanac then again roger bacon lived long before the voynich manuscript was written we currently don't know the original author it seems to have been produced anonymously whilst in prague the book passed through a number of hands one owner was george barresch who wrote about its quote writing in unknown characters with pictures of herbs and our varied images stars and other things another owner wrote his signature on the inside cover it's so faint that you can only view it using multi-spectral imaging jacobi r tepenech he was a courtier living in prague and was the head of emperor rudolph's botanical gardens perhaps he was interested in the book's many plant sketches after its time in prague the manuscript goes silent for 250 years it resurfaces in the jesuit college where it was acquired by wilfrid voynich in 1912. perhaps it had got there by athanasius kirkum the recipient of that original letter kirku was a jesuit and had perhaps taken the book from prague to rome the voynich manuscript has had a colorful gallery of owners i sadly don't have the space to tell the full comprehensive history so the broad idea will have to do radiocarbon dating has the early 15th century for the books creation we don't know who wrote it it's completely anonymous it's not roger bacon as he had died a century before this point after an undocumented period it surfaces in prague passing through the hands of numerous people including emperor rudolf ii the book then goes unaccounted for for 250 years but was probably stored in a jesuit library in rome then under dubious circumstances it ends up in the hands of wilfred voynich the voynich manuscript's intriguing history is one facet of this extraordinary document it's about time we looked inside and explored the book through its illustrations [Music] in the absence of any readable text the best place to start is with the images as strange as they are they're able to reveal a lot about the meaning and purpose of the voynich manuscript the book can be divided each with a unique topic let's begin with the first and largest section comprising roughly half of the voynich manuscript are plant sketches each page is dedicated to a single picture and what we can assume is some sort of description the plants are utterly bizarre from the twisted and tangled to the bright and garish others look downright alien like this one it is multiple bulbs pointed leaves and cubed roots they don't seem to correspond to real-life plants although this one looks like a lily pad could this be a sunflower and this might be a viola tricolor it's a start but the rest of these botanical impossibilities have left us guessing as unique as they are the voynich manuscript is not the only medieval plant book in fact there's a whole genre of them called herbals these are early natural encyclopedia cataloging all the world's plant life medieval herbals follow a typical format what a plant looks like where it grows and what happens when you eat it in the medieval world plants were the closest thing to medicine each plant was believed to have a specific healing property some could cure headaches others toothache or even leprosy not all plants are beneficial this snake drawing is a warning that the plant is poisonous herbals were popular in both medieval europe and the middle east whilst they record an impressive level of early scientific understanding not all of them were strictly accurate my favorite herbals are the ones with mandrakes plants that have human-like bodies for roots if pulled out the ground incorrectly they will shriek loudly killing anyone within earshot returning to the voynich manuscript and we can see just how similar it is to the medieval herbal even though we can't read the text it's probably discussing the properties of each plant but why are the plants so bizarre looking at other herbals plants are drawn rather faithfully yet these are nearly impossible to identify what's more the voltage manuscripts drawings seem well a little crude the colour is hastily applied and the line work is a bit rough i know that medieval manuscript art has its quirks but they were typically done by professional illustrators the voynich manuscript on the other hand looks kind of amateurish more the work of a scientist rather than an artist it could be that our illustrator based their plant drawings on descriptions heard from other people this was quite common in the medieval era just look at pictures of elephants i doubt that this person had ever seen one in real life it remains uncertain all we can say is that this section of the hornet's manuscript is some sort of herbal an encyclopedia of various plants and their properties other than that it's anyone's guess next up are two sections dedicated to the stars i'll talk about them together as they're rather similar these sections are full of circular charts some of which fold out into large spreads the designs are beautiful to look at even if we have no clue what they mean in the section dealing with astrology we have some recognizable zodiac symbols for example pisces taurus and libra orbiting them are women holding stars they're heavily annotated perhaps representing some sort of constellation why the sudden shift from plants to space well it might have to do with medicine in medieval times medicine and astrology were deeply linked when you took something was just as important as what you took this astrology manual gives health advice based on the season in the months of leo it's recommended to take medicine for the stomach the heart and the liver but bloodletting is to be avoided aries is a better time to bloodlet but be sure not to take medicine for the head seeing as astrology and healthcare were once linked perhaps those star charts aren't so random after all maybe these sections were some sort of reference sheet outlining the best times to take a particular medicine on a quick side note this is the only section that has readable text beneath each zodiac sign is the corresponding month written in a language that resembles french we have aberil mai aust and novombra the closest match is okitan a language that was once widely spoken in the south of france this strange detail may point to the manuscript's location of origin sandwiched between the astrology and cosmology sections is one of the weirder parts of the voynich manuscript if it hadn't been weird enough already the section is full of miniature naked women washing in giant bathtubs the section looks like the most fun with water slides and aquatic conga lines as you turn the pages the illustrations get increasingly strange with curling pipes of water and tubes transporting green liquids the people seem to be operating them although their purpose is unclear as you may have expected by now there are other medieval books dedicated to bathing and washing many of these drawings look quite similar to the ones found in the voynich manuscript this is an early guidebook to all the public baths and hot springs across italy each bath was believed to have a special effect or soothe a particular part of the body this health focus seems to match what we've already seen in the voynich manuscript if the plant and astrology sections have been about healthcare why not throw hygiene into the mix by the looks of things the voynich manuscript records some pretty unusual bathing methods maybe these sketches are some form of early shower the book briefly returns to plant drawings this time however the layout is rather different it showcases roots and herbs of all different shapes and sizes beside them are drawings of mysteriously coloured cylinders it's difficult to make out what they are perhaps some sort of container it looks a bit like laboratory equipment particularly the type used for alchemy other alchemy textbooks from this period look rather similar with drawings of beakers and test tubes in the margins it's possible but alchemists dealt with precious metals and rocks not roots and herbs the equipment might have belonged to an apothecary someone who creates herbal medicine if so the section has some sort of medical or scientific focus similar to what we've already seen surround the voynich manuscript the final section is the one we know least about largely because it's entirely in text since we don't know what it says there's not much to go on running down the margin they're what look like stars they could be bullet points seeing as the adjacent letters have been capitalized some dubbed this section the recipes suggesting that it's a guide to making potions i'm not sure that this is a helpful title as the writing could be about something completely different it's a mystery if only we knew what the writing said once this section concludes the book comes to an end judging by the images alone the voynich manuscript looks like some sort of health almanac its various sections can be linked to medieval textbooks from herbals to zodiac charts and guides on the magic of bathtime whilst it has much with the literature of the time the voynich manuscript is far stranger than anything from that era from plants that are nearly impossible to identify to bathing machines that defy logic having looked at the illustrations there's one thing left to explore the writing the images can take us so far but what does the text say let's take a closer look at this writing and attempt to figure out the mystery language looking past the illustrations and focusing now on the writing the first thing you will notice is the unique alphabet some letters are from the latin script like these lowercase letters yet there are some that look like numerals then you have these tall looping characters they've been nicknamed gallows letters as they share an eerie resemblance to a hangman's scaffold overall there are 22 letters in this alphabet although every now and then you might spot a unique symbol in the mix like other european languages the voynich manuscript combines letters to make words they're relatively short ranging from two to ten letters and are separated by spaces finally the writing reads from left to right across the page many believe that what we're dealing with is a cipher a cipher is a way of disguising language often by swapping letters out for symbols most ciphers hide information and protect classified material from getting out this was certainly the case with the copial cipher the writing is a mix of latin and greek letters but with some unique symbols for good measure if you've watched my video on this you'll know that was eventually solved the book contains instructions on initiation rituals and is believed to have belonged to a secret society called the oculists whilst it may look like a scrambled mass of letters the code wasn't too difficult to finally break the best way to decode a cipher is to figure out the original language behind it like people every language has a unique fingerprint some languages like big words others have lots of consonants and not a lot of vowels these fingerprints remain even when the letters are assigned symbols with the kopiel cipher it looked like it was written in german using a machine algorithm they figured out some of the letters after that the rest fell in place the key to breaking a cipher is to figure out the original language if you know that you can crack the code the problem with the voynich manuscript is that figuring out the original language has proven challenging mainly because it doesn't have any of those fingerprints it doesn't seem to behave like any known language there seems to be order in the text there are repeating patterns across the page just like any other language if it was written in random gibberish you would not expect to see this kind of uniformity to make things more difficult researchers have found the presence of not one but two languages in the voynich manuscript most of the book is written in what's been called language a whereas the bath and star sections seem to be written in language b judging by the handwriting they may correspond to different authors one person seems to have written solely in language a and up to four in language b if this is a cipher text we are dealing with an incredibly sophisticated one especially as there are two languages to deal with there are ways to help us figure out the language the first test you can do is to look at word distribution which words are common and which ones are rare if the voynich manuscript has a pattern of common and rare words that's a hint that there really is a language underneath the most commonly used english word is the if you rank the most common words you'll find that the word the accounts for seven percent of all words that are spoken the runner-up of is about 3.5 half of that strangely all languages seem to follow this pattern where the second most common word is used half as much as the first and so on in the voynich manuscript both languages follow this rule the second most common word appears half as much as the first this shows that the voynich manuscript is operating like a real language proof that it's not just random gibberish across the page okay so it's definitely a language but which language is it what will help us out here is to look at the spelling specifically how predictable are some letters over others in english wherever there's a queue there's almost always a u queen question quadruped to name a few this is one of english's fingerprints that a q is typically followed by you now the voynich manuscript has a lot of these letter patterns way more than english in fact voyniches is super predictable when you see this letter it's almost always followed by this one only a few letters appear at the start of words and some are unique to the ends whatever this language is it's very mechanical something you would not expect to see in natural languages this has put a spanner in the works yes the voynich manuscript contains a language but not like any language we know of a third and final method people have used is looking for keywords unique words that only appear in certain sections of the manuscript this is where pictures can really help out it gives us a hint as to the subject matter looking for keywords researchers have found that the plant and root sections have a lot of words in common as both seem to be about herbs perhaps these words have something to do with that unfortunately it doesn't tell us what the words actually are only what they might mean in the end it's still just guesswork it's not much but it's a start what looking for keywords does show is that the manuscript is clearly talking about something it's a tantalising detail but another hint that there is a real language lurking underneath what i've summarized are the main three approaches at deciphering the voynich manuscript looking at how words are distributed reveals a pattern of common and rare words something that shows is not just random gibberish but a functioning language looking at how words are spelled reveals that the letters follow a very predictable pattern far more so than any other known language finally looking for keywords reveals that there are clusters of unique words in the plants and root sections indicating that those words are relevant to those topics you can see why it's been so difficult for cryptographers to solve the mystery language of the voynich manuscript it looks like a language but not like any language we know of despite this there are some who've claimed to have cracked the code of the voynich manuscript others still have claimed to have translated it let's review the various attempts and see what we can find a common suggestion is that the mystery writing is some sort of romance language these are languages that are descended from latin like italian french and spanish people have put forward theories from an abbreviated form of latin italian that's been jumbled into anagrams or perhaps an ancestral form of latin a proto-romance language seeing as these languages were and still are the dominant languages of western europe it's not a bad guess by any means what's more the only writing we can read in the voynich manuscript is in one of these languages if you remember those month names are written in okatan which is a cousin of french whilst it might fit into the historical and geographical context actually proving this hunch has not been very successful perhaps it's some other language like ukrainian turkish or english some have gone outside the box and suggested it's written in an aztec language arguing that the plants could be native to mexico i unfortunately can't talk about every theory individually i will say that none of them have gained much traction either one theory that did cause a stir was in 2016 when two researchers tried to show it was an encrypted form of hebrew using an algorithm they developed they demonstrated that this sentence could be deciphered into this as neither them are hebrew speakers they had to use google translate to complete the rest resulting in this sentence although this paper created a lot of buzz at the time their methods are a little shaky especially as they relied on google translate what's more the hebrew sentence they come up with doesn't make much grammatical sense to begin with nor does the translation for that matter it's always tempting to believe these bold theories that have claimed to have solved the voynich manuscript as of today no one has definitively found the language to match the text but what if the voynich manuscript was written in a language that we don't know about perhaps this book contains the last surviving evidence of a long forgotten tongue this might sound outlandish but there are some real life examples of this one such case is the rongo rongo tablet it was discovered on easter island in the pacific famous for its moai statues it's covered in markings arranged in such a way that resemble pictographic writing since the island was deserted it's believed that the speakers of rongo rongo long since left the island or perished leaving an eerie shadow of the language they once spoke perhaps the voynich manuscript is a long-lost european language an intriguing theory but one with significant problems for example the varnish manuscript does not resemble any language found in europe language isolates do exist in europe like basque but there's no evidence of a tribe of people who once spoke voynich ease how could a language as unique as this one have gone undetected unless we find a rosetta stone with voynich writing on it this line of inquiry too remains inconclusive verging on the doubtful at this point many just give up the search and settle that the voynich manuscript is a hoax the whole thing is a nonsense language made to accompany nonsense images maybe the whole thing is a prank with a convincingly fake language made using some sort of encrypting technique after all the letters do appear in such a predictable manner another reason why the language could be fake is that there are zero mistakes no crossings out no corrections it's a little bit eerie almost every medieval manuscript has some sort of error if these are all just meaningless words then technically there's no such thing as a mistake hence zero corrections maybe the writing is a decoy maybe we've fallen for one big medieval prank sed is a medieval hoax why go to the effort to create the manuscript in the first place complete with a functioning language since manuscripts as this one would have been very expensive to produce why waste all that money on a practical joke i don't buy it to me view suggesting that the voynich manuscript is an ancient hoax don't do justice to its complexity and those who underestimate the book have probably been outsmarted by it the voynich manuscript is frustrating but there is meaning in those pages we just have more work to do this brings us to the final theory about the voynich manuscript it may have been written in a constructed language an artificial way of speaking made from scratch esperanto is an example of a constructed language it's an amalgamation of numerous european languages and was developed in 1887 by dr l l zamerhoff esperanto is the most widely used constructed language with about 100 000 speakers another fan of constructed languages was j.r.r tolkien the author of lord of the rings an avid linguist tolkien created a slew of languages that were spoken across middle earth like quenya a type of elvish it has its own vocabulary and grammar along with an alphabet which looks like medieval writing maybe the voynich manuscript is written in a constructed language an invented tongue whose rules we do not yet know this might explain several things from the unique alphabet to the fact that it behaves like a language yet none that we've ever seen before the practice of constructing languages stretches way back into history one of which was the lingua ignota or unknown language of hildegard von bingen dating to the 12th century this language is a strange set of words reported to be divine in origin we don't have the grammar just the vocabulary but it did have its own alphabet which looked like this many constructed languages were early attempts at creating the world's first universal language many were pioneered by philosophers and scientists who wanted their research to transcend linguistic barriers it could be that the writing in the voynich manuscript was an early attempt at creating one of these seeing as the book is scientific in nature maybe it was using an experimental tongue in hopes of reaching a wider audience if this is the case it would have the opposite effect to a cipher a cipher is used to hide information using code to conceal but if this code is an attempt at some sort of universal language then it's trying to be more accessible however the rules of this ambitious language seem to have been forgotten meaning that rather ironically now no one can read it no theory is 100 plausible and there are of course some difficulties that need to be explained no matter how original constructed languages tend to be based on one or more natural languages esperanto is a composite of all european languages and tolkien's quenia is based on finnish if the voynich manuscript contained a constructed language we'd expect it to be using a natural language as a template or two seeing as there are two languages contained in the book and why not use latin that was the universal language of academia in the middle ages so far the mystery language of the voynich manuscript remains undeciphered perhaps it always will arriving at the end of this investigation let's recap everything we know the voynich manuscript is a real medieval book and has been carbon dated to the early 1400s we're not dealing with a modern hoax in fact it's passed through the hands of many over the years from scientists emperors and collectors although we still don't actually know who wrote it the illustrations hint at the book's original purpose its images have much in common with medieval herbals astrology guides and bathing manuals making it likely that the voynich manuscript was some sort of medical textbook although a very strange one by any measure then there's the writing the most enigmatic aspect of the book it's written in a mystery language with a unique alphabet and grammatical rules as we've seen theories range from real-life languages written in code to ones that are invented from scratch as of this video's upload no one has been able to definitively solve the voynich manuscripts language from my research the closest parallel to the voynich manuscript is this it's a text from the welcome collection featuring apocalyptic scenes from the book of revelation aside from the biblical scenes you can also find details on science and human anatomy with these strange images of various injuries what's more for a time the language of this document was unknown researchers have been able to determine that it's a mixture of german and latin and have since been able to translate it perhaps the answer to the voynich manuscript is in text like these with the book as complex as the voynich manuscript there's plenty i've not been able to talk about like how some of the pages might be missing and whether multiple authors wrote the book i hope that this video has inspired you to investigate the book for yourself links and resources are down in the description below so you can get started the voynich manuscript is well deserving of the title the most mysterious book of all time every aspect of this document is fascinating from its history illustrations to its writing to my mind the fact that almost nothing is known about this manuscript is the reason why it's so appealing sometimes i wonder whether we actually solved it would the magic of mystery disappear or would we uncover a whole new set of questions and embark on another journey entirely in the strange and wonderful pages of the voynich manuscript lie so many untold secrets secrets that may one day be finally revealed [Music] hey thanks for watching i really hope you enjoyed this one it's a massive topic that deserved a real deep dive yes so the channel now has official merch we have beanies t-shirts and hoodies the designs are inspired by biker 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Channel: hochelaga

Views: 769,772

Keywords: Voynich, Manuscript, Mysterious, Cipher, Code, Voynichese, Medieval, Ancient, Cryptic, Investigation, Puzzle, Book, Text, Tome, Language, conlang, hochelaga

Id: CSYXCBqGcZo

Length: 33min 58sec (2038 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022