[kragen]

> The first is that even in medieval times parchment wasn't cheap. It wasn't like anyone could get there hands on enough to make 200 pages of gibberish unless they were a relatively wealthy doodler.

But consider: > The first person said to have owned the manuscript was the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who reportedly was intrigued enough to buy it from its previous owner for six hundred ducats, around ninety thousand dollars in today’s money. (According to the manuscript’s radiocarbon dating, the book was already nearly two centuries old at the time of his purchase.)

Supposing it's random — perhaps the person who made it originally, two hundred years earlier, hoped to charge a similar price from either a gullible patron like Rudolf, or someone who hoped to find a greater fool like Rudolf?

[ChuckMcM]

That is a very good point, if the author knew that there was a demand for mysterious documents they may have created one to fill that demand.

[codezero]

Tis is very likely. I bought a map of the US for my dad (he collects old maps) which depicts California as an island some 10-15 years after they were sure it wasn't an island. It turns out that novelty maps were more in demand than real maps.