Published Hypotheses & Research

What Researchers Have Found

A curated overview of the strongest published findings about the Voynich Manuscript — from multiple independent research traditions. Our own computational analysis appears at the end as one perspective among several.

This page presents findings from multiple research traditions, not a single theory. Voynich research is genuinely multi-disciplinary — paleography, cryptography, computational linguistics, and history all contribute. We present each finding with its source, its strength, and what it does and does not establish.
Section 1

Structural & Statistical Findings

What the text itself reveals
Rigorous

The Text Is Not Random

Information-theoretic analysis shows word co-occurrence patterns consistent with meaningful semantic structure. High-entropy words appear where they would in meaningful text — a pattern that is very difficult to replicate with random or hoax generation.

Source: Montemurro & Zanette (2013). Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript. PLOS ONE, 8(6), e66344.

What it establishes: The text has semantic-like structure.

What it does not establish: What the structure encodes.

Rigorous

Two Distinct "Languages" Are Real (Currier A/B)

A Beta-Binomial mixture model applied to 11 character-pair substitution ratios, with no prior knowledge of Currier's labels, independently selects two groups and predicts held-out folio labels at 89.2% accuracy. The distinction is not a codicological artifact — it persists within individual quires. The A/B label is a low-resolution projection of a three-layer generative structure: a boolean folio switch, a template system, and an independent gradient d/l dimension.

Source: Parisel (2026). A Quantitative Confirmation of the Currier Language Distinction. arXiv:2604.25979.

What it establishes: The distinction is real and structural, not observational.

What it does not establish: What the two "languages" represent — two scribes, two registers, or something else.

Established

The Text Follows Statistical Laws of Natural Language

The Voynich text obeys Zipf's law, has entropy levels consistent with natural language, and shows type-token ratios within the range of known writing systems. These properties alone do not confirm it encodes a natural language, but they rule out simple random generation.

Source: Multiple analyses from Stolfi (1997+), Landini (2001), and subsequent researchers.

What it establishes: The text is statistically language-like.

What it does not establish: Which language, or whether it encodes one at all.

Section 2

Historical & Provenance Findings

What documents and physical analysis reveal
Confirmed

Medieval European Origin, 1404–1438

Carbon-14 dating of four vellum samples places production between 1404 and 1438 (95% confidence interval). The ink and pigments are consistent with medieval European production. Modern forgery is definitively ruled out.

Source: University of Arizona radiocarbon dating (2009). Reported in multiple peer-reviewed venues.

Established

Multiple Scribes Wrote the Manuscript

Paleographic analysis identifies at least five distinct scribal hands, labelled by Lisa Fagin Davis (2020). The hands correlate imperfectly but significantly with Currier A and B sections.

Source: Davis, L.F. (2020). Scribal hands in the Voynich Manuscript. Manuscript Studies.

Section 3 — Contested

Proposed Decipherment Hypotheses

What has been proposed — none confirmed
The following hypotheses have been proposed by researchers. None have been independently confirmed. We present them because they represent methodologically serious attempts, not because we endorse their conclusions.
Proposed

14 Proposed Word Identifications

By comparing Voynich illustrations with labeled medieval manuscripts, Stephen Bax (2014) proposed identifications for 14 words, including the word for Taurus (the constellation). Methodologically sound comparative approach.

Source: Bax, S. (2014). A proposed partial decipherment of the Voynich script. Working paper.

Status: Not independently replicated. Disputed but not refuted.

Retracted

Proto-Romance Language Hypothesis

Gerard Cheshire (2019) proposed the manuscript was written in proto-Romance. Published in Romance Studies.

Source: Cheshire, G. (2019). Romance Studies. [RETRACTED]

Status: Paper retracted by the journal. Claim rejected by comparative linguists.

Section 4 — Our Research

A Computational Perspective

One approach among many
The following findings come from this site's own research — a systematic typological comparison of the Voynich against 63 language corpora from 35+ families. We present them as one data point in a larger field, not as a resolution.
Preprint

No Natural Language Matches the Full Structural Profile

BPE VMML analysis across 63 corpora from 35+ language families found no corpus simultaneously occupying the Voynich discriminant zone on all three metrics (VMML, Boundary Concentration, CBMI). Tagalog (Noli Me Tangere) is the closest match on VMML alone but fails on BC and shows cross-text instability.

Source: Silva (2026). Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20668229 and 10.5281/zenodo.20668970

What it establishes: No tested natural language replicates the Voynich profile.

What it does not establish: What the Voynich is.

Preprint

Tagalog's Elevated VMML Is Text-Specific

Full-corpus computation of El filibusterismo (Rizal, n=114,777 tokens, identical protocol) yields VMML=5.578 — below the alphabetic ceiling. Cross-text Δ=0.336 units. The supra-ceiling Tagalog value is not a general language property.

Source: Silva (2026). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20668970