Like I said in another post (sorry for repeating) since this was during 1500s, the main thing people would've been encrypting back then was biblical text (or any other religion).
Maybe a version of scripture that had been "rejected" by some King, and was illegal to reproduce? Take the best radiocarbon dating, figure out who was King back then, and if they 'sanctioned' any biblical translations, and then go to the version of the bible before that translation, and this will be what was perhaps illegal and needed to be encrypted. That's just one plausible story. Who knows, we might find out the phrase "young girl" was simplified to "virgin", and that would potentially be a big secret.
Is this grey cause it talks about religion? That stuff was bigger in 1500 than 2000, from that lense as religious text seems a reasonable track to follow.
Other than war plans, religious text was pretty much the only thing in the 1500s that would have been encrypted. However war plans would be very unlikely to be disguised as a botany book, for all kinds of reasons. War plans are temporary, not something you'd dedicate that level of artistic effort and permanence to.
The art of war by Sun Tzu is pretty timeless tho
Right, because it's not a war plan. A war plan is about when, where, how, who, etc, for specific attack(s).
yes indeed, more like a war blueprint? like in general strategies applicable to many battles (so you can infer plans for any n wars of the future)
idk
I mean it's theoretically possible a 1500s King might have made that book illegal, because of it's general knowledge. That's a legit point.
Sadly the radio carbon dating disproved two of my far out theories, which was, 1) The book survived from some earlier 'iteration' of life on the planet, where all plants were simply different. or 2) All planets form the same 'kind' of carbon-based life, and this book was sent/delivered to us by another planet.
Sadly, it's probably just someone's form of "art", and not even "real".