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Posts Tagged ‘glyph’

Fun with Ciphers and Codexes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 3, 2026| 3 Comments »

Photo: Art Collection 2 via Alamy.
The Voynich manuscript has never been deciphered. 

We love the French tv series called Astrid, whose autistic heroine can solve any puzzle and has never yet been stumped by a mysterious code. I wish Astrid could apply her unique way of thinking to the puzzle described in today’s article because skepticism about the solution remains.

Tom Metcalfe writes at Live Science, “A unique cipher that uses playing cards and dice to turn languages into glyphs produces text eerily similar to the glyphs in the Voynich manuscript, a new study shows. The finding suggests that an equivalent cipher could have been used to create the mysterious medieval manuscript.

“The new cipher — called ‘Naibbe,’ from the name of a 14th-century Italian card game — does not decode the medieval Voynich manuscript, but it offers an idea for how the manuscript was made.

“The Voynich manuscript, which has been radiocarbon-dated to the 15th century, contains roughly 38,000 words written in glyphs that have never been translated. Despite more than a century of intense scrutiny, the manuscript has not been explained conclusively. However, it continues to intrigue people, with its bizarre and inexplicable illustrations of plants, astrology and alchemy, including supposedly ‘biological’ depictions of bathing naked women.

“In the new study, published Nov. 26 in the journal Cryptologia, science journalist Michael Greshko investigated one way the manuscript may have come together. He told Live Science that he got the idea for the Naibbe cipher while researching stories about the Voynich manuscript. …

“Naibbe first uses the number from the throw of a die to break a block of Italian or Latin into single and double letters — so “gatto” (Italian for “cat”) could become “g”,”at” and “to.” The cipher then uses the draw of a playing card to determine which of six different tables is used to encrypt the letters into ‘Voynichese’ — the strange and undeciphered glyphs that are apparently grouped into words in the manuscript. The tables are ‘weighted’ by the corresponding number of cards so that the statistical occurrence of the mock-Voynichese glyphs is the same as seen in the manuscript itself.

“Greshko’s effort is among the leading attempts to explain how the manuscript was made. But it still only approximated Voynichese text, rather than fully replicating it, he said. …

“The manuscript now lies at a nexus of attempts to understand lost languages, yet experts are not entirely sure if Voynichese is even real.

“One theory, taken seriously, is that the manuscript is a medieval hoax, illustrated with suitably mysterious and salacious drawings, and that the text of Voynichese glyphs is completely meaningless.

“The hoax theory has grown stronger in recent years as more attempts to decipher Voynichese — some of which have used machine learning and other computerized artificial intelligence methods — have failed to crack the code, if there is a code.

“But theories that Voynichese is based on a real language and can be deciphered are still prominent, and Greshko’s Naibbe cipher is one of the closest attempts yet.

“The mock-Voynichese output of the Naibbe cipher has several important similarities to true Voynichese. … Those commonalities suggested that a similar method was used to create the original Voynich manuscript, Greshko said. …

” ‘Dice and playing cards were chosen as sources of randomness because it was essential for the cipher to be ‘hand-doable’ with the technology of the time. …

” ‘My hope is that this becomes adopted as a computational benchmark,’ Greshko said. ‘The points of difference between the cipher and the manuscript may point the way to how the text was actually created.’

“Former satellite engineer René Zandbergen, a renowned expert on the Voynich manuscript who was not directly involved in Greshko’s study, said he appreciated Greshko’s efforts to create an encoding method to approximate Voynichese.

“But Greshko ‘also makes it clear that he is not suggesting that this is how the manuscript text was generated,’ Zandbergen said in an email. ‘He just demonstrates that such a method can be found, and we may assume that there may be others.’ Zandbergen added that he is ‘essentially undecided’ about whether the Voynichese text is meaningful or a hoax.”

More at Live Science, here.

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AI Finds Unknown Glyphs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 12, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Instituto Universitario Yamagata de Nazca.
Some of the new geoglyphs found in Nazca. With their lines eroded by the passage of time, AI has achieved in months what used to take decades.

Let’s have kind word for scary old artificial intelligence and how it has, for example, helped to uncover 303 new geoglyphs in the Nazca desert. (By which I don’t mean to say AI doesn’t have serious potential dangers.)

In an El País archaeological article from Peru, Miguel Ángel Criado reports, “With the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) system, a group of archaeologists has uncovered in just a few months almost as many geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert (Peru) as those found in all of the last century. The large number of new figures has allowed the researchers to differentiate between two main types, and to offer an explanation of the possible reasons or functions that led their creators to draw them on the ground more than 2,000 years ago.

“The Nazca desert, with an area of about 1,900 square miles and an average altitude of 500 meters above sea level, has very special climatic conditions. It hardly ever rains, the hot air blocks the wind and the dry land has prevented the development of agriculture or livestock. Combined, all this has allowed a series of lines and figures, formed by stacking and aligning pebbles and stones, to be preserved for centuries. 

“The first layer of soil is made up of a blanket of small reddish stones that, when lifted, reveal a second yellowish layer. This difference in color is the basis of the geoglyphs and is what was used to create them by the ancient Nazca civilization. Some are straight lines stretching several miles. Others are geometric shapes or rectilinear figures, also huge in size.

“The other major category includes the so-called relief-type geoglyphs, which are smaller. In the 1930s, Peruvian aviators discovered the first ones, and by the end of the century more than a hundred had been identified, such as the hummingbird, the frog and the whale. Since 2004, supported by high-resolution satellite images, Japanese archaeologists have discovered 318 more, almost all of them high-profile geoglyphs. The same team, led by Masato Sakai, a scientist from Yamagata University (Japan), has discovered 303 new geoglyphs in a single campaign, supported by artificial intelligence. …

“ ‘The Nazca Pampa is a vast area covering more than 400 square kilometres and no exhaustive study has been carried out,’ the Japanese scientist recalls. Only the northern part, where the large linear geoglyphs are concentrated, ‘has been studied relatively intensively.’ … But scattered throughout the rest of the desert are many relief-type figures that are smaller and that the passage of time has made more difficult to detect.

“Convinced that there were many more, Sakai and his team contacted IBM’s artificial intelligence division. … They had high-resolution images obtained from airplanes or satellites of all of Nazca, but with a resolution of up to a few centimeters per pixel, the human eye would have needed years, if not decades, to analyze all the data. They left that job to the AI system. Although it was not easy to train its artificial vision … with so few previous images and so different from each other, the machine proposed 1,309 candidates. The figure came from a previous selection also made by the AI with 36 images for each candidate. With this selection, the researchers carried out a field expedition between September 2022 and February 2023. The result, as reported in the scientific journal PNAS, is 303 new geoglyphs added to this cultural heritage of humanity. All are relief-type geoglyphs.

“The newly discovered shapes bring the total number found in Nazca to 50 line-type and 683 relief-type geoglyphs, some geometric and others forming figures. The large amount has allowed the authors of this work to detect patterns and differences. Almost all of the former (the monkey, the condor, the cactus…) represent wild animals or plants. However, among the latter, almost 82% show human elements or elements modified by humans. ‘[There] are scenes of human sacrifice,’ says Sakai. …

“The accumulation of data that has made this work possible brings to light a double connection. On the one hand, these relief-type forms are found a few meters from one of the many paths that cross the desert … paths created by the passage of people until a path is created. According to the authors of the study, these creations were made to be seen by travelers.

“On the other hand, the large linear figures appear very close, also meters away, from one of the many straight lines that cut through the pampas. Here, according to Sakai, the symbolic value rules: ‘The line-type geoglyphs are drawn at the start and end points of the pilgrimage route to the Cahuachi ceremonial center. They were ceremonial spaces with shapes of animals and other figures. Meanwhile, the relief-type geoglyphs can be observed when walking along the paths.’

“Cahuachi was the seat of spiritual power of the Nazca culture between from around 100 BC to 500 AD and, for the authors, the large forms could be ceremonial stops on the pilgrimage to or from there.

“These explanations do not necessarily rule out, according to the authors, other possible functions that have been attributed to the Nazca lines and figures, such as being calendars, astronomical maps or even systems for capturing the little water that fell.”

Things do get fuzzy when we start to interpret ancient signs. Read more at El Pais, here. No firewall.

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Mysterious Carvings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 27, 2023| 6 Comments »

Photo: Yamagata University/ via Reuters.
Peruvian and Japanese researchers from Yamagata University recently discovered 168 new designs at the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Nazca, on Peru’s southern Pacific coast.

Although the latest headlines from Peru are all about political upheaval, isn’t it the case that whatever the headlines, there is always more going on in a country than politics?

From today’s story, we learn about the recent discoveries of a team of Peruvian and Japanese archaeologists.

Victoria Bisset writes at the Washington Post, “Researchers have identified more than 150 new designs in Peru’s southern Nazca plain, known for its mysterious large-scale artwork carved into the desert.

“The latest images were discovered by archaeologists from Japan and Peru, who used high-resolution aerial and drone photos taken between June 2019 and February 2020 to identify 168 new geoglyphs of animals and humans, including birds, killer whales and snakes, carved by the region’s pre-Hispanic inhabitants.

“The Nazca Lines, which are part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, cover an area of almost 175 square miles on Peru’s Pacific coast.

“The lines ‘were scratched on the surface of the ground between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500,’ UNESCO says. … Their purpose is still unknown, but UNESCO says they may have served ‘ritual astronomical functions.’

“The latest geoglyphs to be discovered are believed to date back to between 100 B.C. and A.D. 300, researchers from Japan’s Yamagata University said in a statement announcing the find earlier this month.

“While most of the site’s most famous images are so large that they can only be seen from the air, the most recent images are mostly small, measuring less than 10 meters (around 33 feet) in diameter. …

“The findings will be used in shaping future surveys carried out by artificial intelligence to protect the area, according to the university.

“The site faces threats from urban and economic developments, Masato Sakai, the lead researcher and a professor from Japan’s Yamagata University, told Reuters news agency.

‘Some geoglyphs are in danger of being destroyed due to the recent expansion of mining-related workshops in the archaeological park,’ he said.

“The Nazca Lines have also been impacted by smaller-scale incidents: In 2018, a truck driver damaged part of the site after he ignored warning signs and drove over the area.

“In 2014, activists from the environmental group Greenpeace sparked outrage when they left marks at the site while carrying out a protest — although researchers later said that a grant given to help them repair the damage had led to the discovery of 50 new geoglyphs.”

What do you think the indigenous people who made the carvings — before Peru was Peru — intended? What does “ritual astronomical functions” mean? If they were trying to communicate with beings they perceived in the sky, it makes sense: most of the glyphs can be seen only from the sky.

Read more at the Post, here. If you don’t have a Post account, you can see all the carvings at Reuters, here.

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