The world’s most elusive codex, the Voynich manuscript has yet to be deciphered. The codex pages were radiocarbon dated to the 1400s by the University of Arizona in 2011. No less than ten people have claimed to have deciphered or translated the codex however none of them have been complete translations or entirely accepted by academia. Without knowing the language in which this document was written, we do not know if this is lost knowledge or merely an ancient hoax.
Another similar example is the Minoan Phaistos Disk which dates from 1400 BC. The hieroglyphic writing on this disk was undeciphered for 3,400 years until 2014. This knowledge was lost for thousands of years.
Could our knowledge follow this possibility of getting lost? Is there some other knowledge out there we have yet to decipher?
The Rosetta Project has created a solid nickel disk that fits in the palm of your hand and contains microscopically placed text on 13,000 pages and 1,500 languages in an attempt to circumvent this loss of knowledge in the future. Is this enough? How long would it take a culture 3,000 years from now to decode this disk? Will they ever find the disk? Maybe there is more that we can do.
Only time will tell…
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“Building an Archive of ALL Documented Human Languages. – The Rosetta Project.” Accessed November 20, 2024. https://rosettaproject.org/.
Star, Victoria Blute Arizona Daily. “UA-Led Team Solves Age of Mysterious Text.” Arizona Daily Star, March 7, 2011. https://tucson.com/news/local/education/college/ua-led-team-solves-age-of-mysterious-text/article_ff1be2ac-1122-5423-9ded-a71a75d87a4c.html.
Stolte, Daniel. “UA Experts Determine Age of Book ‘Nobody Can Read.’” UANews.org, February 9, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110217095619/http://uanews.org/node/37825.
“Voynich Manuscript.” In Wikipedia, November 14, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1257392868.
Yale University Library – Digital Collections. “Cipher Manuscript -.” Accessed November 20, 2024. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2002046.