The AI ​​specialist claims that he was able to understand what language the Voynich manuscript is written in.

The Voynich manuscript is a very interesting artifact of the medieval past. This is a manuscript book that was written about 500 years ago by an unknown author, in an unknown language, using an unknown alphabet. From the moment information about it appeared in wide access, it was attempted to decipher more than a dozen times, but no one achieved success. Some cryptographers who have spent more than one year decoding believe that this book is a hoax at all, in which there is no point at all.

The Voynich manuscript became famous thanks to the American bookseller of Lithuanian origin Vifrid Voinich. He acquired it in 1912. The book is currently in the Beinecke Rare Book And Manuscript Library of the Yale University. It consists of 240 pages of thin parchment, the page size is 15 * 23 cm. The thickness of the book is about 3 cm. There are a large number of illustrations in the book, almost on all pages.

During the trials and attempts to unravel the manuscript, many different versions were reported on both the origin of the book and its content. But, unfortunately, it was not possible to give confirmation of what was said in any of the cases. Most of all, it was not cryptographers who talked about the content of the manuscript, but the botanist Arthur O. Tucker from the University of Delaware and IT specialist Rexford H. Talbert. The results of their research scientists published in 2014 in the journal HerbalGram - The Journal of the American Botanical Council.

Scientists were able to identify several dozen plants from 303 presented, 6 animals and one mineral. Almost everything that was stated in the manuscript grows and dwells in Central America. Scientists have concluded that the book is written in one of the dialects of the Aztec language, and it describes the contents of the "botanical garden" in Central Mexico.

Now an expert on artificial intelligence Greg Kondrak from the University of Alberta has announced the next shift in this matter. Talking about why he began to work on deciphering the manuscript, Kondrak said that it is in human nature to learn about the riddle and begin to solve it. "I was interested and I decided to take up this business."

Since previously only individual people (or groups of specialists) were engaged in deciphering the manuscript, Kondrak decided to use as an auxiliary tool what he is well versed in - artificial intelligence. His university has just created software capable of solving many problems, including decoding encoded messages.

The contract with its colleague translated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into 380 languages. Then, using special algorithms, they trained the computer system to recognize different languages. And she was able to correctly identify the language in 97 cases out of a hundred.

After this algorithm was introduced to the Voynich manuscript, the system reported that the book was most likely written in Hebrew and encrypted (there is nothing new in the last statement). The next step was decoding the text itself. Scientists believe that the letters in the words are rearranged, and to understand what the manuscript says, it is necessary to arrange them correctly.

So scientists did, however, not with all the text, but with its initial sentences. As it turned out, the first of them read: "She gave recommendations to the priest, the head of the house, me and the people." Also, from the 72 first words of the text, scientists identified such as "farmer" (or peasant), "light", "air" and "fire."

As for further decoding, scientists say it takes time. And to work on the manuscript, it is desirable to attract specialists who know Hebrew and at the same time are specialists in history. In this case, the text can be deciphered, and finally, to tell the world what the manuscript says. True, now other specialists will have to check the correctness of the assumptions of Kondrak and his colleagues.