There were all kinds of natural history collections in the late 16th and 17th centuries: if you’re interested, you could have a look at any number of books and monographs describing such collections (such as “Cultures of Natural History”), though I’m not sure what you’d be wanting to prove or disprove.

The word “armadillo” itself (‘little armoured thing, basically) apparently dates from 1569 in Spanish and 1577 in English – see “Joyfull Newes out of the Newefound World” by Nicolas Monardes, where the armadillo is first named and described – and I guess there would be drawings of it in other early books too.

Never mind that some people thinks it looks more like a pangolin, never mind a catoblepas.

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

Ole Worm’s Cabinet features an Armadillo in the upper right corner published in 1655 after Ole Worm’s death. My understanding is he kept some detail records of his finds or items he wanted.

much later than the voynich but still some evidence that they were likely collected? Your thoughts

That creature looks a bit like a dragon to me(although the long body and big scales, and the connection to rain clouds, are more reminiscent of Chinese dragons than Western ones…); there’s a dragon eating a plant root elsewhere in the manuscript, so this too could be an imaginary being.

The overall point I was trying to make is that different hypotheses have different (and testable) ramifications. The ramification of post-1600 dating is that everything that implies a pre-1600 date must be bogus and/or misinterpreted: that’s a stretch, too. Hopefully spectroscopy and physical dating will resolve this for you in a way that art history evidence seems not to be able to.

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

That seems to be a stretch. It adds to the three points I made in my previous points made by pre-Columbian Voynich adherents. I had washed up on the European coast before Columbus discovered the New World, and that it looked too much like and armadillo to be one… and yours, now, where you suppose it might have been modified later from a catablepas to an armadillo. To suppose that a later, 17th century artist went through the VMs and corrected this, and added that, to match their contemporary expectations, is, I think, once again projecting a complex solution to a some straightforward evidence… I prefer to simply believe the simple solution… that it is probably a newer
document
than previously believed. Rich.

I have no interest in, or habit of, lambasting anyone’s opinion or interpretation. It may well be a catoblepas, or wolf, or pangolin, as well as an armadillo. I do not know what it is. I personally think it looks most like an armadillo. But even if I and a million people think it looks like an armadillo, it will not make it one, any more than if noone thinks it is an armadillo will make it more “not one”. It is what it is, whatever that is.

What interested me most… and I did not expect this when I first discussed the f80v animal… is the fact that overwhelmingly, those who hold a pre-columbian dating for the Voynich thought it was not (or said they thought it was not) an armadillo, while overwhelmingly, those with no knowledge or interest in the Voynich, or who held a later dating for the Voynich, thought it looked quite like one. This strongly implies that the identity of this animal is being driven by a preconception of the date range of the Voynich. I don’t mean to personally impune any one person’s well meant interpretation, only that the overall numbers practically insist on this conclusion… “in general”. It looks like a case of the tail wagging the armadillo.

The only two pre-Columbian Voynich researchers who thought it still looked like an amadillo had this reasoning: One said that it may have floated up to Europe, before Columbus, and the other pointed out that it looked “so much” like an armadillo that it probably was not one… because the art in the Voynich is generally so inaccurate.

I do not know the date of the Voynich, I do not say this is an armadillo. So don’t shoot the messenger… I am only giving my opinion of it, and my opinion of the feedback of others. You and others may well be right, and I full well respect that possibility. Rich.

My blog
post on the issue, for those interested.

Even if I had sufficient mental agility to defend the armadillo hypothesis against all-comers (as a kind of debating society exercise), I must confess that I would still be sorely tempted to duck the challenge.

Incidentally, my only brush with the world of the armadillo was many years ago when I unknowingly ate some stewed armadillo tail… but that’s a long story.

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

It’s interesting that German settlers in Texas called them “Panzerschwein.” That’s something we Americans could have called Germans in WWII. We weren’t very creative or even very derogatory, we just called them “Krauts.”

Given that the same water nymph is touching her bottom with her other hand, I think you have to be pretty wary about reading too much symbolism into these drawings.

But I’d certainly second the idea that lor ar ol olor is an unusual word, and it even seems to be slightly highlighted on the page (not sure why that should be). And as I see almost all of these as verbose pairs, I’d parse it as l.or.ar.ol.ol.or, i.e. an ABCDDB pattern. All the same, be careful because word-initial “l” is a real Currier-B phenomenon, and so probably represents something more than just a single letter. My guess is therefore that the plaintext for this will turn out to have the pattern “ B C D D B”, where all the letters encipher consonants. Unfortunately, that seems likely to be neither CaToBLePaS nor NiGRiCaPo: but feel free to come up with a better suggestion!

Sorry for not being more specific!

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….