Complex Numbers

The Oz Hypothesis

Couple of things to warn everyone about concerning today's link. First, and most importantly, it's from Metro (a UK tabloid), so it's not exactly reputable. Second, though most relevant, the page contains images that you probably don't want your boss or coworkers to see you looking at (in other words, NSFW). These include poorly-rendered nude sketches. It is not, however, pornographic.

In short, view at your own risk.

Disclaimers out of the way, here it is:

    Secret medieval manuscript could actually be a very old sex guide  

Yes, they mean the Voynich Manuscript.   Which I'll call the VM from now on because I'm lazy.

The Voynich manuscript has fascinated both scientists and the public for more than a century since it was rediscovered by a rare books dealer in 1912.

Many "rediscovered" books turn out to be more modern hoaxes. If the VM is a hoax, it's a very, very good one. So good that it's still worth figuring out the purpose of it.

Now however, two historians from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, think they may have found the meaning behind it – sex.

Lots of people have made guesses, educated and otherwise, about what it's for. These range from aliens having a laugh at our expense to, well, this, which I'll call the Oz Hypothesis.

Claiming it's about sex is a sure way to get people to notice, much as my cat refuses to pay attention to me until I say, "Treat!"

But while we don’t know who the first owner was, it’s fair to say they lived during a rather prudish time.

...says the article, immediately following the sentence with two illustrations from the VM featuring nekked wimmin.

Writing for The Conversation, study co-author Dr Keagan Brewer said: ‘One section contains illustrations of naked women holding objects adjacent to, or oriented towards, their genitalia. These wouldn’t belong in a solely herbal or astronomical manuscript. To make sense of these images, we investigated the culture of late-medieval gynaecology and sexology – which physicians at the time often referred to as “women’s secrets”.’

I probably would have been better off just linking that Conversation article, but then I wouldn't have had the opportunity to snark on the hilarious juxtaposition of "lived during a rather prudish time" and illustrations of women apparently bathing.

This suggests to avoid censorship, the author used a mix of the cipher and illustrations to share their message.

The problem with the Oz Hypothesis is that ciphers only work for communication when they can be, well, deciphered. The VM has been analyzed more thoroughly than a postmodern stream-of-consciousness novel, by some of the most accomplished cryptographers in the world, and no one has been able to crack the code.

This is also a problem for pretty much every other guess about the VM, with the possible exception of "space aliens playing a hoax."

Anyway, the article touches on some of the evidence for the Oz Hypothesis. Which, to me, is no more or less compelling as evidence than several other hypotheses (well, more compelling than "aliens," maybe).

But the sex angle is practically guaranteed to generate clicks.