Comment by philistine
2 months ago
With how undecipherable the manuscript is, my personal theory is that it's the work of a naive artist and that there's no language behind it. Just someone aping language without knowing the rules about language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_art
It's not a mental issue, it's just a rare thing that happens. Voynich fits the whole bill for the work of a naive artist.
And that naïve artist somehow managed to create a work that follows Zipf's law, 4 centuries before it was discovered?
Random Texts Exhibit Zipf’s-Law-Like Word Frequency Distribution: https://www.nslij-genetics.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/ie...
It also applies to a range of natural phenomena, e.g. lunar craters and earthquakes: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6241/2019sp/readings/Ne...
So the fact that word frequencies in the Voynich Manuscript follow Zipf's law doesn't prove it's written in a natural language.
Why would it not ?
You're not alone. Many have hypothesized this is just made up gibberish given the unusual distribution of glyphs.
Not a recent hoax/scam, but an ancient one.
It's not like there weren't a ton of fake documents in the middle age and renaissance, from the donation of Constantine to Preserve John's letter.
The way you describe it is why it’s not readily accepted. It’s misunderstood. You called it a hoax/scam and a fake. It’s not!
Whoever made the document was sincere in making up something that doesn’t exist. They had no intention to mislead. You wouldn’t call a D&D campaign a hoax because it features nonexistent things?
So you're saying it's a prop or a rulebook? (an old xkcd comic mentioned this).
I doubt it's a rulebook cause it's not a real language.
If it's a prop, it would be extremely expensive.
Just to get the parchment you'd have to slaughter a herd of ovines, then you'd have to process it, then you'd have to pay a skilled professional or more for months of work to draw and write.
So I think the profit motive is more likely, and given we know of a ton of scams like this from this period, it seems the most plausible.
But I'll be happy to be proven wrong if someone finds more info in the future.