The Voynich manuscript is a very old book. Its pages date from the early 1400s. It has 240 pages, with strange writing and pictures of people, plants, and stars. Experts have tried to read it for more than 100 years. A new study suggests a problem: someone may have put the pages in the wrong order.
Researchers Lisa Fagin Davis and Colin Layfield studied the book. Davis found strange changes in the handwriting from page to page. Some pictures start on one page and continue much later in the book. The researchers think the book started as separate, folded sheets. Someone may have joined these sheets together by mistake. Layfield also used a computer method to compare parts of the writing. Some pages showed similar patterns. Others were very different. These results support the idea about the page order.
The researchers still cannot read the book. Davis says people need to look again at earlier work about it. The team may also compare water marks on the pages. The shapes of these marks could help them find the right order.
