M.J. Rose

The Voynich manuscript continues to be one of the most fascinating and mysterious objects on earth. No one has ever been able to decipher it, but it looks as if there may be some new theories about its origins.

Mexican plants could break code on Voynich manuscript

by Lisa Grossman (New Scientist)

“A mysterious manuscript that appears to be written in gibberish may actually be in an extinct dialect of the Mexican language Nahuatl. Illustrations of plants in the manuscript have been linked to plants native to Central America for the first time, suggesting a new origin for the text. But some still say it could be a hoax.

The Voynich manuscript has puzzled researchers since book dealer Wilfrid Voynich found it in an Italian monastery in 1912.

Among hundreds of pages of so-far undecipherable text, it includes illustrations of naked nymphs, astrological diagrams and drawings of plants that no one has been able to identify.

An academic war has raged for years between those who think the manuscript contains a real language that could eventually be decoded, and those who think it was a clever forgery designed to dupe book collectors.

“It’s a battle with two sides,” says Alain Touwaide, a historian of botany at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. …”

For the rest, click here.

There’s something about second hand finds that are exhilarating – but what if those bargain treasures were available to you as a direct result of someone else’s misfortune? Lost airline baggage, for example, which then becomes  eternally unclaimed luggage on a carousel far, far away. If you’ve ever had the displeasure of such a baggage tragedy, you will know that it is pretty much the most irritating thing a traveler can experience other than the stomach flu.

It may seem like a destination on the way to the Twilight Zone, but the Unclaimed Baggage Center is very, very real and it resides in the deep South –

“A bride-to-be slides out of the passenger side of her mama’s car, right next to the businessman who needs gear for his hike on the Appalachian Trail. Across the parking lot, a burst of laughter erupts from a mini-van of women stretching their legs and hedging their bets on the best bargain of the day.

It’s another day at Unclaimed Baggage Center…”

Find out more about this mysterious place, here.

Cranial deformation techniques in infancy do not expand cranial volume – and these mysterious skulls are much larger than typically human. That is just one of the bizarre anomalies present in these ancient skulls from Peru. New DNA analysis suggests that whomever these ancient peoples were, they were possibly not completely human…

Initial DNA analysis of Paracas elongated skull released – with incredible results

“Paracas is a desert peninsula located within the Pisco Province in the Inca Region, on the south coast of Peru. It is here were Peruvian archaeologist, Julio Tello, made an amazing discovery in 1928 – a massive and elaborate graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with the largest elongated skulls found anywhere in the world. These have come to be known as the ‘Paracas skulls’. In total, Tello found more than 300 of these elongated skulls, which are believed to date back around 3,000 years. A DNA analysis has now been conducted on one of the skulls and expert Brien Foerster has released preliminary information regarding these enigmatic skulls…”

See more here, and a video below.