[philistine]

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.

[cronopios]

And that naïve artist somehow managed to create a work that follows Zipf's law, 4 centuries before it was discovered?

[DonaldFisk]

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.

[poulpy123]

Why would it not ?

[riffraff]

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.

[philistine]

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?

[riffraff]

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.