If it is a joke, it reminds me of that time where scientists wanted to translate some Norse runes that were considered sacred. They eventually managed to get access to them which were high up on a wall. When they translated them they found out that the runes pretty much said "This is very tall." So yeah, I support the idea that the Voynich Manuscript is an example of ancient shitposting,
Every language on this planet has a certain pattern. This is because our brain is wired a certain way. If the language in this manuscript has the same pattern than it is NOT gibberish but a real language. A few runes is also a different scope than a whole book written by several authors over a timespan of hundred years. There is no way this book is just a joke. People should have some common sense.
@@hakimdiwan5101 read from another comment that the script literally does not follow the same formula as the rest of all languages so it’s safe to say it’s likely a shitpost if that comment is right.
@@nicholasstancel Thanks! Expedition is one of my favorite books and it'd be great if Curious Archive had a video about it. Especially because it has more creatures than Alien Planet
That's exactly what I commented on the Codex Sephranius video - it's even more similar to the Voynich Manuscript than just the unreadable language, even the content shows parallels.
i always found this book extremely interesting. it's almost like someone was trying to do world building for a fantasy/sci-fi world in that world's native language. sorta like a book about the klingon homeworld written and illustrated by a klingon.
I’m 90% in the category that either an individual or a group of individuals created this incredibly bizarre art piece as a source of entertainment or humor-we too often give little credit to artists of history for their humor. I’m so glad that on your channel you’ve highlighted a few of these hilarious instances, and have done so again here. Your channel really is one-of-a-kind! Edit: I have nothing to do with the nonsense in the replies. I just think this book is obviously a one of a kind mystery and I like thinking about it as an artpiece/literary artifact, and that CA provided some plausible theories. Good lord did people get in a heated debate *unrelated* to my actual comment. Lol.
I've seen studies performed on the book that indicate the text contained within it has no viable information. While the characters are very similar to existing languages (ancient Turkish, as mentioned here) this does not actually translate the book. It is as if someone who did not speak this language used words and characters without the context of their meaning. No successful translation of the book exists still, even with the clue of the texts relation to ancient Turkish. So it's more like... a fabrication of a Turkish farming almanac?
@@ThrottleKitty total nonsense, I dont know where u people get these tales... It literally describes each plant, its effects medicinally and when and how to harvest. Plus a few descriptions of fertility rituals.
This book has fictional plants, elaborate tables and diagrams, and elaborate chemical equipment? All in a fictional language? They were truly playing DnD before it was cool.
@@guikoi3101 not that I agree or disagree that dnd is cool but it's worth pointing out that something can be fairly widely accepted and still not considered "cool" specifically
Imagine if in the far future aliens find the ruins of our society and see a book about memes. That might be their equivalent of the Voynich Manuscript.
@@Heli-draws clearly these primates made godly pilgrimages to a place known as "Internet" here they managed their many cults, chief among them a man with some pole that seems to be singing. Another far greater deity of there's was the being known simply as "Doge" it is unknown of why such worship occurred. Perhaps another alien species populated these lands to become God's to these lesser class 2 inteligente species.
Everyone thinks it's a guy! It could have been a very clever woman who worked with apothecary herbs and was the equivalent of a Doctor of Botany and Women's health.
@@Eowyn3Pride that’s fair, but sadly highly unlikely. While women at that time & period worked sometimes around medicinal herbs and healing stuff, they VERY RARELY were given the chance to be able to learn how to read and write. So, while not impossible, it’s extremely unlikely.
There are three untranslatable books that I know of. One was a purposeful art project, the other has been demonstrated to have some translation and may in fact be an encoded prayer book. The third is this enigma, the Voynich Manuscript.
The mystery was partially solved thanks to mathematics, they did a frequential analysis of the symbols, how often they appear, and in what strings, order, those kinds of things. Turns out, it's probably gibberish, as it lacks the structure of a real language (things that even isolated languages or very distant ones have in common, no matter what). This means that it's either a fake, invented by someone to fool a buyer, a noble, etc, or a unique language with a syntax, a grammar and a structure like no other. Statistically, it's much more likely the former is the correct explanation!
@@Ringleader17 I very much doubt that, as Tommy said, the text just doesn't have a structure of _any_ real language. So, either a gibberish, or some complex (i.e. not just substitution) cypher. Besides, there are plenty of people who claim to have decoded it as a certain language, but so far nobody has been able to provide a complete translation that would make sense. Like, there is this guy whose name I forgot, who already came up with several attempts, one of which claims that it's a lost transitional romance language from 9th century, but in his translation it uses grammar atypical of any other romance language, together with loanwords from languages like high german or even arabic and hebrew and even then it often contradicts itself, so the result doesn't really make any sense. So unless someone shows me a complete translation that makes sense and can consistently explain _how_did they get it, I'll remain skeptical.
@@TubususCZ yeah I agree, ancient Turkish is well studied and understood, even if it were a cypher they had nothing this sophisticated in the 1500s... Also the fact that the pictures represent things that don't exist lends credence to the hypothesis of a forgery made by a book dealer or an alchemist, in a time when the "occult" was very much in fashion.
I've seen a number of things on this book, the fake language within it is clearly based closely on ancient Turkish, but the attempted translation is widely accepted as a hoax or a failure, as no cipher or key as been provided by the team who supposedly figure it out. No successful translation of this book has actually been provided, it is only claimed to exist. As mentioned by the OP, the text is believed to be statistical gibberish based on advanced analysis, which means you could strong arm a "code break" out of a single page that would rapidly fall apart as applied to other pages where the same characters are used over and over in ways that can not be reconciled with the "translated" page. Simply put, it if was as simple as being written in ancient Turkish, the moment that clue was out the book would be translated a dozen times over. The fact that it's not shows that it is clearly not written in a straight forward, fairly well understood existing language without an additional code or cipher applied on top of it.
"We sometimes think of past societies as serious." Yeah, tell that to all the art enthusiasts & literature buffs. I mean, Mozart wrote a composition about licking butts & Mona Lisa could've been a guy who decided to pose as a woman just for laughs.
@@scavorthespacecowboy2096 Lovecraft was many things, but he certainly wasn't racist on purpose or due to any loathing of peoples. I'd recommend Finn John's brief bio he wrote in his Complete Omnibus collection.
Interesting theory! Latin used to be popular among "the wise ones" like scientists or priests so I guess a book like this would be written in Latin as well. Polish (both Old and modern) is written with Latin alphabet (+few extra dots and lines above some letters which make them sound different, it's our way to detect spies) so if it's really some unknown pre-Old Polish (Old Polish is actually X-XV century Polish) then it was written before the Christianisation (pre-X century). The book itself cannot be that old so it's possible that the author found once some old manuscripts and decided to rewrite them. But personally I think the author was just a troll and done that for fun. E: okay, I've done some research and now I'm almost sure it cannot be any of the Slavic languages. They just "work" in a different way, they have for example many one- or two-letter words and some really long ones which appear from time to time (proto-Slavic was probably similar). The text in Wojnicz's book is written with only mid-length words. It also doesn't look like Latin-with-non-Latin-letters for me. It could be one of the Asian or African languages written with an experimental transcription.
Imagine a situation like this: Some archeologists find a manuscript and can't understand what its' written After months they finally able to decipher the manuscript They find out that it literally spells "never gonna give you up"
The one thing which might speak against a prank most is the sheer effort. The ressources for making the codex alone would be very expensive at the time it was made, and somebody able and willing to write a whole manuscript would probably use it rather for something more substantial, not to speak about the time put into writing it. In my eyes the ratio of investment and result doesn't fit the prank idea - but I'm not an expert and had to use the often times misleading institution called "common sense", so I could be totally wrong.
Doesn't have to be a 'prank' per se. Could have been made as a work of art as a gift; an esoteric nonsense book as an amusement for a king for instance.
I often imagine that a secret mediaeval sect, that wanted to keep it’s knowledge secret, just made up a language, and then payed to have books translated into that language that only they knew. 🤷
@@TheDMG45 That's a reasonable idea, although I would expect the illuminations and miniatures to be of higher quality in this case. But again - one shouldn't infer oneself from other people, especially not when they lived centuries ago. People loved curiosities back in the day (and probably as long as humans exist), so I wouldn't be totally surprised if your idea was right. 👍
im late to the party but the book could be a hoax - imagine some talented conartist cooking up smt like this and then selling it as a rare book oddity or esoteric text. Making shit like this for niche audiences wouldnt be unreasonable (just look at modern cults or scams related to spiritual movements). Also maybe the author was providing remedies and esoteric services themselves and used the book as proof for their knowledge xd They could make up any shit thats written in there since no one else could disprove it because the book is not legible. It would also make them look smart and mysterious if no one else is able to read the book but them lmao
I think it was a scribe's attempt to baffle a printer. A Gutenberge Print Press was reliant on molds and had an advantage dealing with typical writing or drawing with Roman Letters and Typical florishes. So a scribe must have wanted to draw something to test the limits of printing or perhaps to prove scribing superior. I have no idea if his plan worked as expected or the printers were able to be ingenious and creative enough to replicate the manuscript as expected. All in all such a manuscript would be an oddity and collector item, since it was not made to replicate reality, but to test a technology ending a profession that was quickly becoming irrelevant.
@@IMidgetManI Thanks. I thought of it when I first heard about how an attempt was made by a Venetian printer to copy the Qura'an to sell it to the Ottomans, but the copy was rejected because it was full of errors and Qura'an as the Muslims holiest book and the word of Allah (God) shouldn't contain any errors at all (Arabic scribes were extremely scrupulous with the writing and a copy with a misplaced line or curve was burned). This resulted in the print press not entering into Arabic language writting nations (not only Arab nations, but Turkish, Farsi and Urdu) until centuries later and to which was attributed the backwardness of these nations in sciences and literature after this point. More about the only remaining copy of "that" Qura'an to miraculously survive (probably by the Venetian printer) can be found here "Paganino & Alessandro Paganini Issue the First Printed Edition of the Qur'an in Arabic, of Which One Copy Survived : History of Information" www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=405 So from there it is easy to conclude that other European scribes either tried or suceeded in doing the same (suceed at baffling a printer), but instead of the Qura'an they used a latin lettered manuscript to prove their accuracy and that Printing is a flawed technique of copying (obviously this was due to the permanent nature of the molds and the skill of its maker more than it is with the process that has proven with time to be effective at meeting and exceeding all challanges).
@Catholicus sum Christianus. You mean the Qura'an? It is not in ancient Turkish, its in Arabic. The Ottoman empire chose Arabic Alphabet as the written language of the court 700 years ago (when Islam was chosen as the official religion). The founder of Modern Turkey Mustafa Kamal Ataturk Romenized the Turkish Alphabet in attempt to "modernize" the country and to sever the country's links to its Ottoman roots. I see how the confusion occured; if you were Greek then you will be exposed to Arabic only, through Ottoman texts, but be aware that Arabic was adopted as the language by Ottomans not the other way around.
@@IMidgetManI Are you asking me?! Occam's Razor, what is more likely:- A) This Manuscript was written in a lost language and is describing lost science and knowledge? OR B) This is a made-up document created to serve a purpose, the best of which is to haze printers? You decide.
The most popular running theory is that it was fabricated by an artist who knew a particular rich merchant liked to pass through the town keen to overpay for weird rare books. So he makes the weirdest, rarest book the merchant has ever seen and claims to have acquired it form someone else. That's why it has so much effort has been painstakingly put into it, yet it is so incomprehensible, and also has a vague feeling of the characters in the book mocking the person attempting to read the book.
In the 1500's books were incredibly expensive to make. Doesn't make sense for it to be a joke. Realistically it's probably somebody's Alchemical journal. They use to do everything they could to hide their notes. They would use a ton of codes and implement their Alchemical recipes into like, regular ole baking recipes or story books. Wouldn't push it past one of them to just make up their own language. Plus the signs that it's Alchemy related are there.
I find the idea that this could be an example of speculative biology/alternative reality world building just so charming. Its an interest that's seen as particularly modern but the notion that people have always been inquisitive, curious and artistic in that way is just really heartwarming to me for some reason.
If this is a prank it's one of the most expensive pranks ever. Making a book in the 14th or early 15th century - before Gutenberg - took a loooooot of time and pages, ink, etc costs money aswell. I think it's written in a now extict non-IndoEuropean language. I don't know.. Illyrian or a central Asian Turkic language. But a dialect with its own alphabet is possible/plausible too
depends on whom you want to prank. I doubt the guy who wrote it wanted to prank us in the future. I would say it is more of a prank (or rather, a scam) towards somebody like the emperor Rudolf II... Basically "I am an alchemist and I have this super rare book that only I can read; employ me into your services". Sure, making the book would take some time, but the lifelong tenure on Rudolf's castle would be worth it, probably
Maybe it was some form of world-building project. It's not impossible that someone from the past had a wild imagination and thought they'd document the world they are creating in their head.
i 100% believe this was a medieval nerd who was just super into wordbuilding and decided to make a whole book about their alien planet using a conlang they made for it imagine being that person, and learning that 500 years from now a bunch of the worlds top minds would be obsessively trying to understand your goofy passion project because they thought it had some deeper meaning
My theory is that some medieval monk or "Enlightened person of science" make the Voynich manuscript in an attempt to look busy for long periods of time.
One thing is for certain: It is worldly. Everything in this book is something that we can comprehend, meaning we can see that there are plants, and people and stars. Another theory suggests that there was a translation script provided by the author but that got lost or destroyed somewhere. It could also be a story book of some kind.
@@brianbatey9281 except it literally wasn’t translated lol. Only 1 guy on youtube claims to have translated it from old turkish, and literally every other scholar working on the book disagrees, like with every other person that has claimed to have translated it. It hasn’t been translated.
I did a video response to your video, Curious Archive. I believe the alphabet's letters are made up from the artist combining Astrology Symbols. The plant pictures probably have to do with alchemy, whereas the sun and star charts are astrology, even with the sun being represented that way. He or she was probably an artist who really loved astrology and alchemy, two subjects which have a lot of links, and they made a fake encyclopedia and just added their "artistic taste" to what they drew.
I watched a short documentary on TH-cam that it's just an old Turkish plant book, lots of the symbols and diagrams are used for mapping the seasons for different plants etc. It's not a hoax or magic whatever, just some old book about plants that's a bit weird...
Yah but sadly, like with every other person that claims to have translated it, it ended up not standing as a theory. That’s why it is still unstanslated and why every other scholar working on the script has denied the validity of that dude on TH-cam
There's a theory on this I read somewhere that, a woman had written the voynich manuscript. Hence why the language is undecipherable: The woman used a language they had learned in secrecy from the men, as well as why it depicts many pictures of woman and medicinal plants. Maybe the plants were beneficial to the woman, and their health as well as to their issues.
Congrats on 100k! Your videos are great, my personal favourite are your fictional biology videos and your history videos. Keep doing what your doing because it is great!
I remember reading an article about it being at least partially deciphered, something about a drawing that resembled pepper, had a set of symbols that, when a cypher was applied, returned the numeric code that when translated back to English said "pepper"
Plot twist: These were leftover materials and defective pages/pages with errors brought together after the scribes had finished their book orders. Instead of throwing them away or recycling, they thought they'd make something fun out of the stuff. I know I would. 😁
I actually really like this idea, like a medieval version of a concept art book for stuff that was never put in a movie or game. That could also explain some of the writing, where it maybe isn't actual words but some kind of set of repeatable patterned letters that someone would have used to keep their pen sharp and their hand steady when writing them over and over and over again
amazing video, you NEEEEED new background music, the entire time i kept turning it off and on thinking someone's phone was ringing, and if you picked it for engagement or whatever shame on you LoL
The book is written with many different Medieval Latinic shorthand characters of the & (et) type, and in a heavily stylized manner. Several of those symbols (not so stylized, of course) have been repurposed into various letters, although them and the ampersand are the only currently used ones.
There are manuscripts in India and Egypt that to this day have not been studied or translated that depict ancient technology that is unknown to the modern world
My assumption is its probably a codded alchemic text. In Europe during the medieval era, alchemists and their practices where considered forbidden by the Catholic church, so makes sense why it would be written in a codded language, full of symbiology, filled with depictions of plants, and charts of celestial bodies. Alchemy was incredibly wide-spread during the era with varying symbiology and depictions depending on the region of origin and era. Alchemy was based on experimentation. Due to this, there was no clear and concise way to practice it.
this reminds me of that one video where a dude sealed a bag of cheetos in a coffin and inscribed the recipe for it on the lid to mess with future civilizations.
I for one think it's a fictional medical text for a fictional world, Written in a conlang. Just an elaborate exercise of creativity. It really does explain all The Oddities about the book.
I would love it if everyone could find such books from their own childhood where they might have drawn from their kiddish imagination and written in absolute gibberish that only their kid self understood, then all posted it online for us all to crack one another's code. Imagine there being 1000s of such "untranslated" "mysterious" books that are just blank pages filled with by creative minds.
I first heard of this book because of the video game Koudelka and its sequel series Shadow Hearts; in the games was a book based on the Voynich Manuscript called the Emigre Document, which WAS written by Roger Bacon, still alive and well in the turn of the century setting..
Imagine if Alan Turing developed an encryption scheme where he broke the rules of his own encryption scheme in multiple key places, then translated some gibberish using an inconsistent ruleset -- then drew some pictures with cryptic looking symbols just to mess with people. I'd imagine that a monk or two might have had the intelligence, and more importantly, the time and the sense of boredom to pull this off.
I'm a total nobody but I have a theory of my about it, for me the book is like a presentation of an amanuensis the was outside the church, and to not be blasphemous did not write bible but a collection of what he could do, so strange plant, strange writing and fonts and strange symbols that looked like something familiar to the people. He was trying to make a living for me, maybe he wrote many other books or he spent all his money on the book. I wrote everything in Male for simplicity I'm not English
it's interesting, I saw your channel, I subscribed to your channel, the video is great, thank you for taking the time to make the video, I support you ❤️❤️❤️👍
I've always felt like this was just some worldbuilding project by some medieval writer and illustrator with a made up language that they hadn't really shared with thar many people, somehow it survived for centuries Like, it isn't some alien artifact that some people like to claim. I think it's literally just an ancient creative work
I believe it’s written by a Jewish/Arabic alchemist from Spain who didn’t want his discoveries to be found out. In one of the AI studies showed that the language written is closely related to Ladino- the language of the Sephardi people.
Imagine it's thousands of years in the future and by some miracle the only thing that survives us is a collection of meme images between 2000 and 2020 because someone archived that someway somehow, imagine the confusion.
not even going to lie, if I was a prior back in the medieval era and I had nothing better to do I would 100% do something like this. Make an untranslatable 500 year old shitpost that frustrates the power nerds of the future. God bless you whoever wrote this.
I think it could be from a school for writers and artists and this was an assignment or a project that got added to by each student over the years to show skill. Could be a person with a specific neurological Condition who had an elaborate world in their head and just wanted to jot it down over their life time with the help of an institute or family. Or maybe someone on springbreak from another world dropped their textbook on their way back to the portal.
Wait hang on Surreal Plants? unknown diagrams? Zodiac Rings? A language that is completely indecipherable? Thats not a book. Thats a DM's notes for their DND campaign.
If it is a joke, it reminds me of that time where scientists wanted to translate some Norse runes that were considered sacred. They eventually managed to get access to them which were high up on a wall. When they translated them they found out that the runes pretty much said "This is very tall." So yeah, I support the idea that the Voynich Manuscript is an example of ancient shitposting,
Every language on this planet has a certain pattern. This is because our brain is wired a certain way. If the language in this manuscript has the same pattern than it is NOT gibberish but a real language. A few runes is also a different scope than a whole book written by several authors over a timespan of hundred years. There is no way this book is just a joke. People should have some common sense.
@@Bullshitvol2 What makes you think that it's written by several authors? What makes you think that there is actually a structured language?
@@hakimdiwan5101 he has a idea in his head that will allow him to twist everything to fit into his own perverted world perspective
@@Phantom-bh5ru I would like to know if what he said is based on any source outside of this video or as you said it is typical human bias at work.
@@hakimdiwan5101 read from another comment that the script literally does not follow the same formula as the rest of all languages so it’s safe to say it’s likely a shitpost if that comment is right.
The ancient King of Comedy managed to create the ultimate everlasting joke
Love your YT avatar...
An "Eo-Sapien" from Expedition/Alien Planet.
I do hope that Curious Archive will cover Alien Planet in the near future.
@@nicholasstancel Thanks! Expedition is one of my favorite books and it'd be great if Curious Archive had a video about it. Especially because it has more creatures than Alien Planet
@@nexus6mc2182
Absolutely. Which of Darwin IV's native fauna are your favourite?
Mine are the "Skewers." 👍
@@nicholasstancel Besides the Eosapiens? The Daggerwrists. Reading about Scar-chest's pregnancy was pretty shocking and scary!
@@nexus6mc2182
Yes, I liked the Dagger-Wrists as well.
I like to think that this is a medieval-version of the Codex Sephranius.
I think it might be
That's how I think of it too
Thats what i thought to
That's exactly what I commented on the Codex Sephranius video - it's even more similar to the Voynich Manuscript than just the unreadable language, even the content shows parallels.
History does repeat itself, so you might not be wrong
Imagine the author telling his friend why he wrote it like:
"For the memes"
And his friend was like:
"What is a meme?"
"Dude can you imagine how confused people will be hundreds, even thousands of years from now?"
"Haha yeah, it's gonna be hilarious!"
Book of the Lols
Even worse finding he was just practicing his skills.
i always found this book extremely interesting. it's almost like someone was trying to do world building for a fantasy/sci-fi world in that world's native language. sorta like a book about the klingon homeworld written and illustrated by a klingon.
The book is weird i think i know this language
🥰🍻
@@aleksandarradivojevic6091 whhaatt??!! Super cool!!!😳🤗😂😁🍻
Looks like elves languaje
@@jjba3571 yes with half of latin and a little bit of acient english
I’m 90% in the category that either an individual or a group of individuals created this incredibly bizarre art piece as a source of entertainment or humor-we too often give little credit to artists of history for their humor. I’m so glad that on your channel you’ve highlighted a few of these hilarious instances, and have done so again here. Your channel really is one-of-a-kind!
Edit: I have nothing to do with the nonsense in the replies. I just think this book is obviously a one of a kind mystery and I like thinking about it as an artpiece/literary artifact, and that CA provided some plausible theories. Good lord did people get in a heated debate *unrelated* to my actual comment. Lol.
its a farmers almanac and has been translated im pretty sure it was ancient turkish... Dont belive in everything u read on the net
@@iv7796 correct. It is simply medieval turkish.
I've seen studies performed on the book that indicate the text contained within it has no viable information. While the characters are very similar to existing languages (ancient Turkish, as mentioned here) this does not actually translate the book. It is as if someone who did not speak this language used words and characters without the context of their meaning. No successful translation of the book exists still, even with the clue of the texts relation to ancient Turkish. So it's more like... a fabrication of a Turkish farming almanac?
@@ThrottleKitty total nonsense, I dont know where u people get these tales... It literally describes each plant, its effects medicinally and when and how to harvest. Plus a few descriptions of fertility rituals.
@@iv7796 No one has ever seen these translations, you are silly for believing everything you hear online.
This book has fictional plants, elaborate tables and diagrams, and elaborate chemical equipment? All in a fictional language?
They were truly playing DnD before it was cool.
It was never "cool" lol.
"Critical Role" proves you wrong.
Bunch of mainstream celebrities playing DnD? Yeah, DnD is accepted and is cool now. Has been for a while.
@@guikoi3101 not that I agree or disagree that dnd is cool but it's worth pointing out that something can be fairly widely accepted and still not considered "cool" specifically
@@GlossArt shouldn't "being cool" be Subjective?
@@the_big_har okay "deadlypants"
Imagine if in the far future aliens find the ruins of our society and see a book about memes. That might be their equivalent of the Voynich Manuscript.
Imagine aliens trying to understand what Doge is and why he is so common in the depictions of this ancient civilization
@@Heli-draws clearly these primates made godly pilgrimages to a place known as "Internet" here they managed their many cults, chief among them a man with some pole that seems to be singing. Another far greater deity of there's was the being known simply as "Doge" it is unknown of why such worship occurred. Perhaps another alien species populated these lands to become God's to these lesser class 2 inteligente species.
The creator was probably laughing his ass off as he was writing this book.
Everyone thinks it's a guy! It could have been a very clever woman who worked with apothecary herbs and was the equivalent of a Doctor of Botany and Women's health.
@@Eowyn3Pride that's true, hell of a troll
@@Eowyn3Pride doubt women could even write at the time.
@@thalassaer4137 exactly lol
@@Eowyn3Pride that’s fair, but sadly highly unlikely. While women at that time & period worked sometimes around medicinal herbs and healing stuff, they VERY RARELY were given the chance to be able to learn how to read and write. So, while not impossible, it’s extremely unlikely.
"We sometimes think of past societies as being perpetually serious."
Only by people who haven't read Canterbury Tales. XDD
But human nature doesn't change much, and it's possible that the author of this book made it for the lolz.
Maybe was just a big meme
What tales again?
Roman soldiers used to carve phallus into walls when they were bored, not much has changed with modern day military tbh.
@@usgishimuracruises5710 dick joke is a universal concept amongst humankind that trascends time and space
There are three untranslatable books that I know of. One was a purposeful art project, the other has been demonstrated to have some translation and may in fact be an encoded prayer book. The third is this enigma, the Voynich Manuscript.
What are the other two untranslatable books you're talking about?
@@Heli-draws the first one is probably Codex Seraphinianus
@@Heli-draws the Second might be the Rodonc Codex
This book was written in Turkic. There are guys working on translating it right now.
The mystery was partially solved thanks to mathematics, they did a frequential analysis of the symbols, how often they appear, and in what strings, order, those kinds of things. Turns out, it's probably gibberish, as it lacks the structure of a real language (things that even isolated languages or very distant ones have in common, no matter what). This means that it's either a fake, invented by someone to fool a buyer, a noble, etc, or a unique language with a syntax, a grammar and a structure like no other. Statistically, it's much more likely the former is the correct explanation!
It's ancient Turkish, a group has already cracked one of the page.
@@Ringleader17 I very much doubt that, as Tommy said, the text just doesn't have a structure of _any_ real language. So, either a gibberish, or some complex (i.e. not just substitution) cypher. Besides, there are plenty of people who claim to have decoded it as a certain language, but so far nobody has been able to provide a complete translation that would make sense. Like, there is this guy whose name I forgot, who already came up with several attempts, one of which claims that it's a lost transitional romance language from 9th century, but in his translation it uses grammar atypical of any other romance language, together with loanwords from languages like high german or even arabic and hebrew and even then it often contradicts itself, so the result doesn't really make any sense. So unless someone shows me a complete translation that makes sense and can consistently explain _how_did they get it, I'll remain skeptical.
@@TubususCZ th-cam.com/video/p6keMgLmFEk/w-d-xo.html
@@TubususCZ yeah I agree, ancient Turkish is well studied and understood, even if it were a cypher they had nothing this sophisticated in the 1500s... Also the fact that the pictures represent things that don't exist lends credence to the hypothesis of a forgery made by a book dealer or an alchemist, in a time when the "occult" was very much in fashion.
I've seen a number of things on this book, the fake language within it is clearly based closely on ancient Turkish, but the attempted translation is widely accepted as a hoax or a failure, as no cipher or key as been provided by the team who supposedly figure it out. No successful translation of this book has actually been provided, it is only claimed to exist. As mentioned by the OP, the text is believed to be statistical gibberish based on advanced analysis, which means you could strong arm a "code break" out of a single page that would rapidly fall apart as applied to other pages where the same characters are used over and over in ways that can not be reconciled with the "translated" page.
Simply put, it if was as simple as being written in ancient Turkish, the moment that clue was out the book would be translated a dozen times over. The fact that it's not shows that it is clearly not written in a straight forward, fairly well understood existing language without an additional code or cipher applied on top of it.
"We sometimes think of past societies as serious."
Yeah, tell that to all the art enthusiasts & literature buffs. I mean, Mozart wrote a composition about licking butts & Mona Lisa could've been a guy who decided to pose as a woman just for laughs.
Someone should totally write a Lovecraftian tale using this book.
racism manuscript
I think Peter Clines
@@scavorthespacecowboy2096 Lovecraft was many things, but he certainly wasn't racist on purpose or due to any loathing of peoples. I'd recommend Finn John's brief bio he wrote in his Complete Omnibus collection.
@@samsonsoturian6013 search the cat
@@rehansajid1106 His dad name the cat
Imagine it’s actually just really old polish that nobody has been able to translate
Interesting theory! Latin used to be popular among "the wise ones" like scientists or priests so I guess a book like this would be written in Latin as well. Polish (both Old and modern) is written with Latin alphabet (+few extra dots and lines above some letters which make them sound different, it's our way to detect spies) so if it's really some unknown pre-Old Polish (Old Polish is actually X-XV century Polish) then it was written before the Christianisation (pre-X century). The book itself cannot be that old so it's possible that the author found once some old manuscripts and decided to rewrite them.
But personally I think the author was just a troll and done that for fun.
E: okay, I've done some research and now I'm almost sure it cannot be any of the Slavic languages. They just "work" in a different way, they have for example many one- or two-letter words and some really long ones which appear from time to time (proto-Slavic was probably similar). The text in Wojnicz's book is written with only mid-length words. It also doesn't look like Latin-with-non-Latin-letters for me. It could be one of the Asian or African languages written with an experimental transcription.
Close, but it's actually ancient Turkish. A group already translated a page from the book.
@@Ringleader17 thanks for the info! I’m so excited to see how this gets translated!
I've thought of that too...🤔
Imagine a situation like this:
Some archeologists find a manuscript and can't understand what its' written
After months they finally able to decipher the manuscript
They find out that it literally spells "never gonna give you up"
You’ve just given me a brilliant idea
The one thing which might speak against a prank most is the sheer effort.
The ressources for making the codex alone would be very expensive at the time it was made, and somebody able and willing to write a whole manuscript would probably use it rather for something more substantial, not to speak about the time put into writing it.
In my eyes the ratio of investment and result doesn't fit the prank idea - but I'm not an expert and had to use the often times misleading institution called "common sense", so I could be totally wrong.
Doesn't have to be a 'prank' per se. Could have been made as a work of art as a gift; an esoteric nonsense book as an amusement for a king for instance.
I often imagine that a secret mediaeval sect, that wanted to keep it’s knowledge secret, just made up a language, and then payed to have books translated into that language that only they knew. 🤷
@@TheDMG45
That's a reasonable idea, although I would expect the illuminations and miniatures to be of higher quality in this case.
But again - one shouldn't infer oneself from other people, especially not when they lived centuries ago.
People loved curiosities back in the day (and probably as long as humans exist), so I wouldn't be totally surprised if your idea was right. 👍
im late to the party but the book could be a hoax - imagine some talented conartist cooking up smt like this and then selling it as a rare book oddity or esoteric text. Making shit like this for niche audiences wouldnt be unreasonable (just look at modern cults or scams related to spiritual movements). Also maybe the author was providing remedies and esoteric services themselves and used the book as proof for their knowledge xd They could make up any shit thats written in there since no one else could disprove it because the book is not legible. It would also make them look smart and mysterious if no one else is able to read the book but them lmao
Imagine having your headworld journal with your own language so perplex collectors that its legendary hundreds of years in the future.
Writer goals
I think it was a scribe's attempt to baffle a printer.
A Gutenberge Print Press was reliant on molds and had an advantage dealing with typical writing or drawing with Roman Letters and Typical florishes.
So a scribe must have wanted to draw something to test the limits of printing or perhaps to prove scribing superior.
I have no idea if his plan worked as expected or the printers were able to be ingenious and creative enough to replicate the manuscript as expected.
All in all such a manuscript would be an oddity and collector item, since it was not made to replicate reality, but to test a technology ending a profession that was quickly becoming irrelevant.
Thats a really unique and interesting theory. I like it.
@@IMidgetManI Thanks.
I thought of it when I first heard about how an attempt was made by a Venetian printer to copy the Qura'an to sell it to the Ottomans, but the copy was rejected because it was full of errors and Qura'an as the Muslims holiest book and the word of Allah (God) shouldn't contain any errors at all (Arabic scribes were extremely scrupulous with the writing and a copy with a misplaced line or curve was burned).
This resulted in the print press not entering into Arabic language writting nations (not only Arab nations, but Turkish, Farsi and Urdu) until centuries later and to which was attributed the backwardness of these nations in sciences and literature after this point.
More about the only remaining copy of "that" Qura'an to miraculously survive (probably by the Venetian printer) can be found here "Paganino & Alessandro Paganini Issue the First Printed Edition of the Qur'an in Arabic, of Which One Copy Survived : History of Information" www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=405
So from there it is easy to conclude that other European scribes either tried or suceeded in doing the same (suceed at baffling a printer), but instead of the Qura'an they used a latin lettered manuscript to prove their accuracy and that Printing is a flawed technique of copying (obviously this was due to the permanent nature of the molds and the skill of its maker more than it is with the process that has proven with time to be effective at meeting and exceeding all challanges).
@Catholicus sum Christianus. You mean the Qura'an?
It is not in ancient Turkish, its in Arabic.
The Ottoman empire chose Arabic Alphabet as the written language of the court 700 years ago (when Islam was chosen as the official religion).
The founder of Modern Turkey Mustafa Kamal Ataturk Romenized the Turkish Alphabet in attempt to "modernize" the country and to sever the country's links to its Ottoman roots.
I see how the confusion occured; if you were Greek then you will be exposed to Arabic only, through Ottoman texts, but be aware that Arabic was adopted as the language by Ottomans not the other way around.
@Catholicus sum Christianus. you seem certain that this is the case. What makes you so convinced that this theory is correct?
@@IMidgetManI Are you asking me?!
Occam's Razor, what is more likely:-
A) This Manuscript was written in a lost language and is describing lost science and knowledge?
OR
B) This is a made-up document created to serve a purpose, the best of which is to haze printers?
You decide.
Maybe it's an artist's imagination book of that era, a bit like the very old equivalent of "Encyclopedia Of A World That Doesn't Exist"
I wanna write a book specifically to troll anyone who tries to read it.
The problem is finding a place in which it will be lost to time only to be found by future archeologists
You are rapidly becoming one of my favorite channels on youtube
Same here! Stumbled unto it just a few days ago and can't stop watching these videos
The most popular running theory is that it was fabricated by an artist who knew a particular rich merchant liked to pass through the town keen to overpay for weird rare books. So he makes the weirdest, rarest book the merchant has ever seen and claims to have acquired it form someone else. That's why it has so much effort has been painstakingly put into it, yet it is so incomprehensible, and also has a vague feeling of the characters in the book mocking the person attempting to read the book.
This is the only channel of this type I actually subscribed to. (Monotone guy talks about sciencey stuff.)
This is a fascinating subject. I would love to hear about developments with AI translation in the future.
In the 1500's books were incredibly expensive to make. Doesn't make sense for it to be a joke.
Realistically it's probably somebody's Alchemical journal. They use to do everything they could to hide their notes. They would use a ton of codes and implement their Alchemical recipes into like, regular ole baking recipes or story books. Wouldn't push it past one of them to just make up their own language. Plus the signs that it's Alchemy related are there.
Exactly!!
Not enough occultists in this comment section...
I find the idea that this could be an example of speculative biology/alternative reality world building just so charming. Its an interest that's seen as particularly modern but the notion that people have always been inquisitive, curious and artistic in that way is just really heartwarming to me for some reason.
"lol let's just draw wierd plants with made up language to troll future human"
I like to think it’s just very early “trolling”.
It's called we do a little trolling
trolling in medieval be like:
@@ok1025 People trolled themselves using literal trolls
If this is a prank it's one of the most expensive pranks ever. Making a book in the 14th or early 15th century - before Gutenberg - took a loooooot of time and pages, ink, etc costs money aswell. I think it's written in a now extict non-IndoEuropean language. I don't know.. Illyrian or a central Asian Turkic language. But a dialect with its own alphabet is possible/plausible too
So how you explein the surreal ilustrations?
Definitely not Turkic or Illyrian. For sure. Specially at the 14th century.
It could also perfectly be a constructed language, made for example for a secret sect, and they wanted something that only them could understand.
depends on whom you want to prank.
I doubt the guy who wrote it wanted to prank us in the future. I would say it is more of a prank (or rather, a scam) towards somebody like the emperor Rudolf II... Basically "I am an alchemist and I have this super rare book that only I can read; employ me into your services".
Sure, making the book would take some time, but the lifelong tenure on Rudolf's castle would be worth it, probably
"At how many layers of shitposting are you right now?"
"Yes"
Maybe it was some form of world-building project. It's not impossible that someone from the past had a wild imagination and thought they'd document the world they are creating in their head.
“It’s just a prank, bro.”
The prank:
i 100% believe this was a medieval nerd who was just super into wordbuilding and decided to make a whole book about their alien planet using a conlang they made for it
imagine being that person, and learning that 500 years from now a bunch of the worlds top minds would be obsessively trying to understand your goofy passion project because they thought it had some deeper meaning
My theory is that some medieval monk or "Enlightened person of science" make the Voynich manuscript in an attempt to look busy for long periods of time.
The guy who wrote this was probably some primordial stoner who wanted to draw what he saw.
One thing is for certain: It is worldly. Everything in this book is something that we can comprehend, meaning we can see that there are plants, and people and stars. Another theory suggests that there was a translation script provided by the author but that got lost or destroyed somewhere. It could also be a story book of some kind.
this was the book I thought the codex thing was and the whole reason I watched this channel, so I'm glad it finally got a video on it
It might be a Turkish dialect; there's been some research into that avenue that looks promising.
It isa medevil Turkish dialect. It was translated. Its a medical text
@@brianbatey9281 except it literally wasn’t translated lol. Only 1 guy on youtube claims to have translated it from old turkish, and literally every other scholar working on the book disagrees, like with every other person that has claimed to have translated it. It hasn’t been translated.
I’ve been waiting for you to make this!
Congrats with 100k+ subsribers, I really enjoy the content.
Thank you!
I did a video response to your video, Curious Archive.
I believe the alphabet's letters are made up from the artist combining Astrology Symbols. The plant pictures probably have to do with alchemy, whereas the sun and star charts are astrology, even with the sun being represented that way. He or she was probably an artist who really loved astrology and alchemy, two subjects which have a lot of links, and they made a fake encyclopedia and just added their "artistic taste" to what they drew.
I watched a short documentary on TH-cam that it's just an old Turkish plant book, lots of the symbols and diagrams are used for mapping the seasons for different plants etc. It's not a hoax or magic whatever, just some old book about plants that's a bit weird...
I saw that too.
Yah but sadly, like with every other person that claims to have translated it, it ended up not standing as a theory. That’s why it is still unstanslated and why every other scholar working on the script has denied the validity of that dude on TH-cam
There's a theory on this I read somewhere that, a woman had written the voynich manuscript. Hence why the language is undecipherable: The woman used a language they had learned in secrecy from the men, as well as why it depicts many pictures of woman and medicinal plants. Maybe the plants were beneficial to the woman, and their health as well as to their issues.
Congrats on 100k! Your videos are great, my personal favourite are your fictional biology videos and your history videos. Keep doing what your doing because it is great!
I remember reading an article about it being at least partially deciphered, something about a drawing that resembled pepper, had a set of symbols that, when a cypher was applied, returned the numeric code that when translated back to English said "pepper"
I do like these “highlights of oddities” videos! Keep em up!
Plot twist: These were leftover materials and defective pages/pages with errors brought together after the scribes had finished their book orders. Instead of throwing them away or recycling, they thought they'd make something fun out of the stuff. I know I would. 😁
I actually really like this idea, like a medieval version of a concept art book for stuff that was never put in a movie or game. That could also explain some of the writing, where it maybe isn't actual words but some kind of set of repeatable patterned letters that someone would have used to keep their pen sharp and their hand steady when writing them over and over and over again
I like to imagine it was just someone making speculative biology deciding to take it to the next level by writing it in a new language
amazing video, you NEEEEED new background music, the entire time i kept turning it off and on thinking someone's phone was ringing, and if you picked it for engagement or whatever shame on you LoL
The book is written with many different Medieval Latinic shorthand characters of the & (et) type, and in a heavily stylized manner. Several of those symbols (not so stylized, of course) have been repurposed into various letters, although them and the ampersand are the only currently used ones.
That’s a very bold claim. Any translations to back it up?
There are manuscripts in India and Egypt that to this day have not been studied or translated that depict ancient technology that is unknown to the modern world
I like to think the creative fantastical things I draw and write will someday be found and pondered over as much as this amazing work of art. :)
My assumption is its probably a codded alchemic text. In Europe during the medieval era, alchemists and their practices where considered forbidden by the Catholic church, so makes sense why it would be written in a codded language, full of symbiology, filled with depictions of plants, and charts of celestial bodies. Alchemy was incredibly wide-spread during the era with varying symbiology and depictions depending on the region of origin and era. Alchemy was based on experimentation. Due to this, there was no clear and concise way to practice it.
I was waiting for you to make a video about this book
Love when you bring books or things that human cannot compreend or translate. It's so cool and mysterious! Please make more videos like that!
Keep making this amazing videos
I was hoping you'd cover this!
I first heard of this book from a novel called "Time Riders". The manuscript is very interesting
Interesting channel. Subbed
this reminds me of that one video where a dude sealed a bag of cheetos in a coffin and inscribed the recipe for it on the lid to mess with future civilizations.
I for one think it's a fictional medical text for a fictional world, Written in a conlang.
Just an elaborate exercise of creativity. It really does explain all The Oddities about the book.
i always love these
It could be someone ancient rpg setting
ah yes, the ancient meme
it's been translated tho
Someone found my homework.
I would love it if everyone could find such books from their own childhood where they might have drawn from their kiddish imagination and written in absolute gibberish that only their kid self understood, then all posted it online for us all to crack one another's code.
Imagine there being 1000s of such "untranslated" "mysterious" books that are just blank pages filled with by creative minds.
I knew you would cover this. 👍
I honestly hope this is a centuries-old prank.
History channel would say aliens.
My own theory is that its a medieval worldbuilding
It's almost like the *All* *Tomorrows* of its day
Another well placed together recap of a mysterious book.
Medieval equivalent of "we do a little trolling"
I first heard of this book because of the video game Koudelka and its sequel series Shadow Hearts; in the games was a book based on the Voynich Manuscript called the Emigre Document, which WAS written by Roger Bacon, still alive and well in the turn of the century setting..
At first I was skeptical but now I'm certain this is the greatest troll in history
Imagine if Alan Turing developed an encryption scheme where he broke the rules of his own encryption scheme in multiple key places, then translated some gibberish using an inconsistent ruleset -- then drew some pictures with cryptic looking symbols just to mess with people. I'd imagine that a monk or two might have had the intelligence, and more importantly, the time and the sense of boredom to pull this off.
I'm a total nobody but I have a theory of my about it, for me the book is like a presentation of an amanuensis the was outside the church, and to not be blasphemous did not write bible but a collection of what he could do, so strange plant, strange writing and fonts and strange symbols that looked like something familiar to the people. He was trying to make a living for me, maybe he wrote many other books or he spent all his money on the book. I wrote everything in Male for simplicity I'm not English
What if it's some sort of Speculative Encyclopedia?
Love it! very much inspiring
I think that Voinich Manuscript is a result of somebody's mischief 😂😂
Watch this just be some medieval dude just zonked out of his mind on shrooms
it's interesting, I saw your channel, I subscribed to your channel, the video is great, thank you for taking the time to make the video, I support you ❤️❤️❤️👍
Don't let the history channel see this
Somebody had to pay a lot for this book to be made.
So....
Who spend a fortune on a joke?
I bet in a couple thousand years my text conversations will be as decipherable as this
I've always felt like this was just some worldbuilding project by some medieval writer and illustrator with a made up language that they hadn't really shared with thar many people, somehow it survived for centuries
Like, it isn't some alien artifact that some people like to claim. I think it's literally just an ancient creative work
That honestly seems like the most likely answer.
Imagine your only source of medical care is some guy reading out your star sign
I believe it’s written by a Jewish/Arabic alchemist from Spain who didn’t want his discoveries to be found out. In one of the AI studies showed that the language written is closely related to Ladino- the language of the Sephardi people.
♥️ your videos
Some monk just sat down one day and said “I’m going to mess with so many people.”
I'm convinced that an anonymous person wrote this book just some sort of advanced form of comedy from Medieval Times...
C'mon guys, do a little searching and you'll find out that it has been translated.
Imagine it's thousands of years in the future and by some miracle the only thing that survives us is a collection of meme images between 2000 and 2020 because someone archived that someway somehow, imagine the confusion.
I find this fascinating.
not even going to lie, if I was a prior back in the medieval era and I had nothing better to do I would 100% do something like this. Make an untranslatable 500 year old shitpost that frustrates the power nerds of the future. God bless you whoever wrote this.
I swear I watched a video recently where some experts finally figured out the manual. It's written in short hand and it's mostly about medicine
I think it could be from a school for writers and artists and this was an assignment or a project that got added to by each student over the years to show skill.
Could be a person with a specific neurological Condition who had an elaborate world in their head and just wanted to jot it down over their life time with the help of an institute or family.
Or maybe someone on springbreak from another world dropped their textbook on their way back to the portal.
Wait hang on
Surreal Plants?
unknown diagrams?
Zodiac Rings?
A language that is completely indecipherable?
Thats not a book.
Thats a DM's notes for their DND campaign.
Probably it's just a history book accidentally left by an alien student during a school trip to Earth.