Another Possible Voynich Breakthrough 160
bmearns writes "Over the past few weeks we've been hearing a lot about a possible breakthrough in decoding the infamous Voynich manuscript, made by a team of botanists who suggested that the plants depicted in the manuscript may have been from the New World and the mysterious writing could be a form of an Aztec language. But the latest development comes from linguist Stephen Bax, of Bedfordshire University, who believes he has identified some proper names (including of the constellation 'Taurus') in the manuscript and is using these as a crib to begin deciphering the rest of the text, which he believes comes from the near east or Asia."
Schizophrenia (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was younger, early 20s back in the 1990s , once of my best friends started to slip into schizophrenia (it ran in his family). He constantly jotted drawings and writings on paper, which grew increasingly more bizare. Started with pictures of aliens and UFOs (Which he'd say where just him having fun) but over time turned into numerological type things (My first letter is T my second is C, I am top cat, my age adds up to 9 which upside down is a third of 666 etc etc etc) and increasingly more paranoid mystery theories. He'd draw charts explaining the relationships between things.
And since he was a biology student, he drew lots of plants. Particularly his favorite, marihuana.
Whats to say this isn't the mad scrawlings of a schizophrenic mad man, 500 years ago? It'd certainly fit the pattern.
Re:Schizophrenia (Score:5, Interesting)
Length and coherency don't preclude madness. One of my father's patients claimed to visit another world frequently and wrote a very long book detailing the world and its inhabitants. I have a huge map he drew of the place with detail so fine you need a magnifying glass to read it all and plates of the (not surprisingly) bizarre animals that lived there. The whole thing is incredibly detailed and quite internally consistent. Schizophrenia is not orthogonal to intelligence.
There's also work like Henry Darger's [wikipedia.org], which is extremely lengthy and follows a coherent theme.