A group of physicists from the University of Arizona, using the method of radiocarbon dating, determined the age of the Voynich manuscript and, thus, put an end to at least one of the questions related to this most mysterious manuscript in the world
The Voynich manuscript, by an unknown author, is a book of more than two hundred parchment pages filled with incomprehensible drawings and obscure text, written in an unknown language using a mysterious alphabet. It was discovered and bought in 1912 by the antique book dealer Wilfried Voynich (husband of Ethel Lilian Voynich) in one of the Jesuit villas south of Rome. For the last 18 years of his life, Voynich devoted himself entirely to trying to decipher the book, but his efforts, like the efforts of others, were in vain. The drawings, mostly in color, depict plants unknown to science, astronomical maps with the Sun, Moon and zodiac signs, incomprehensible circles, as well as many naked women who are inside strange systems of vessels filled with liquid. The text is even strangercomposed partly of Latin letters and partly of letters never seen at all.
The book is clearly encrypted, but the cipher itself is unbreakable, although the best cryptanalysts of the 20th century worked on it. It is not even clear what language this book is written in. The main suspect is, of course, Latin, but there are other versions, for example, Chinese. The only thing that was established by studying the frequency of letters, as well as using other statistical methods of analysis, that this is a truly meaningful text, and not a random set of letters composed by a medieval hoaxer. Now the Voynich manuscript is at Yale University, in the Beinecke library of rare books and manuscripts.
The age of the manuscript also raises questions. From some hints, it can be assumed that it was written by the Franciscan monk, philosopher and naturalist from Britain Roger Bacon, who lived in the 13th century. Now this version has been rejected, and most are inclined to think that the book was written 200 years later. Radiocarbon analysis by the Arizona group showed that the truth is in the middle - physicists dated the document to the 14th century.
