A team of Russian researchers believe they have made significant progress in unraveling the mystery of the infamous Voynich Manuscript.
Thought to be around 600 years old, the richly-illustrated and coded work has vexed experts for over a century since it was 're-discovered,' including cryptographers with the CIA and the NSA.
However, a new study conducted by Russian mathematicians appears to have revealed the source languages behind the code contained in the manuscript.
Their unique process relied on removing all of the vowels and spaces from the text, rendering it an enormous mass of characters.
They then ran a statistical analysis comparing the code to a wide array of known languages and came up with some surprising conclusions.
According to their findings, 60 percent of the manuscript is written in English and German, while the remaining 40 percent was some form of Spanish, Italian, or possibly Latin.
While the study provides a glimmer of hope to those who someday wish the read the notorious manuscript in full, the researchers noted that deciphering the text remains a daunting task.
Although removing the vowels and spaces allowed them to seemingly find the source languages of the text, a proper decoding requires those details to be included in order to completely understand what specific words were written.
However, using the possible source languages as a starting point may allow future researchers to use advanced technological analysis to someday fully unlock the mysterious text, a prospect which some experts thought would be impossible.
Before one gets too excited about the prospects of what might be in the Voynich manuscript, the one of the academics behind the project mused that it would appear that the text is rather archaic agricultural and scientific information that would be of little value to today's modern world.
While that may be the case, for the countless individuals who have pored over the code for decades, it would no doubt be a fascinating read nonetheless.
Coast Insiders looking to learn more about the Voynich Manuscript can check out the 3/23/2014 edition of the program featuring artist Stuart Davis and Professor of Linguistics Stephen Bax.
Not a Coast Insider yet? Sign up today.
Source: Sputnik News