#khipus

[diasporaofmyth]

The College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots

Manny Medrano cut loose on spring break by analyzing a set of khipus.

"Medrano noticed that the way each cord was tied onto the khipu seemed to correspond to the social status of the 132 people recorded in the census document. The colors of the strings also appeared to be related to the people’s first names. The correlations seemed too strong to be a coincidence."

[sciencenewsforstudents]

These knotted cords may hide the first evidence that the Incas collected taxes

Some knotted string devices point to crop levies imposed by the Incan empire, researchers say. But other khipus continue to evade description.

While excavating an Inca outpost on Peru’s southern coast, archaeologist Alejandro Chu and his colleagues uncovered some twisted surprises.

In 2013, the scientists were digging in one of four rooms lining the entrance to what had been a massive storage structure, and they started finding sets of colored and knotted strings poking through the ground. Known as khipus, these odd Inca creations recorded census totals, astronomical events and other matters of state interest. In a society without a writing system, khipus also told stories about Inca rulers’ exploits.

That, at least, is what Spanish chroniclers wrote about khipus in the decades after toppling the Inca empire in 1532. But Spanish accounts, which were based on interviews with royal Inca record keepers, provide only general descriptions of these cord contraptions. Researchers have yet to decipher khipus from various parts of the Inca empire, and it’s a mystery what any particular cord array meant to its makers.

INCA LEVIES  Knotted cords created by South America’s Inca empire suggest this mysterious civilization, represented here by ruins of a fortified center in Peru, instituted a tax system shortly before falling to Spanish invaders in 1532. CREDIT: DEMERZEL21/GETTY IMAGES PLUS 

So just finding khipus at the Inkawasi site, an imposing military and administrative site unlike any other known from the Inca world, was a big deal. Inkawasi’s khipus were also unlike any found before, and in a weird way. Most were found covered by the remains of regional crops, mainly peanuts or chili peppers.

In two years of work at the storage facility, called Qolqawasi, Chu’s team found 29 khipus in three rooms and a central corridor at the front of the structure. Excavations revealed that nearly all the finds lay underneath scattered edibles.

But Chu, of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, couldn’t explain what he had uncovered. So when Harvard University archaeologist and khipu researcher Gary Urton heard about Chu’s puzzling discoveries through a mutual friend, he headed to Peru for an in-person look. “I had never seen produce placed on khipus,” Urton recalls of his 2014 visit to Inkawasi. “I didn’t know what to do with that at first.”

Urton and Chu now think that they have untangled the meaning of Inkawasi’s crop-topped cords. These khipus recorded a fixed amount, or tax, deducted from food that surrounding communities deposited at the state-run storage center, the researchers report in the March Latin American Antiquity. This is the first evidence, the duo says, that the Inca devised a way to tax goods.

But Urton and Chu’s conclusion, while exciting, is only one small piece of a much larger puzzle. Approximately 1,000 previously discovered khipus exist, held in museums and private collections around the world. While those tens of thousands of knots are receiving increasing research scrutiny, most khipus remain frustratingly mysterious. To enable large-scale research, Urton and his colleagues have assembled detailed information about these khipus into a digital database, which investigators from Lima to London can consult in efforts to untangle the code — or codes — of the Incas’ cords.  

[arqueologiadelperu]

Quipus: Las voces del pasado de los incas

Estudiante de Harvard ayuda a descifrar el misterio del código Inca contenido en los quipus. Manny Medrano muestra un modelo de nudos de un Khipu, un sistema de información que los Incas usaron para registrar datos. Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Durante siglos, Diego no pudo ser escuchado. Un campesino que había vivido en un pueblo remoto en el Imperio Inca, existía solo como un número…

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[archaeologicalnews]

Untangling the Ancient Inca Code of Strings

Two vibrant bundles of string, over 10,000 feet high in the Peruvian Andes, may hold clues for deciphering the ancient code of the Inca civilization.

Kept as heirlooms by the community of San Juan de Collata, the strings are khipus, devices of twisted and tied cords once used by indigenous Andeans for record keeping. Anthropologists have long debated whether khipus were simply memory aids — akin to rosary beads — or a three-dimensional writing system. The latter seems more possible, and decipherment more feasible, according to new research on the Collata khipus, published Wednesday in Current Anthropology.

In the study, University of St. Andrews anthropologist Sabine Hyland analyzed string color, fiber and twist direction to identify 95 unique signs — enough to constitute a writing system — and proposed a phonetic decipherment of the khipus’ final strings, thought to represent family lineage names. Read more.

[arqueologiadelperu]

Tributos en Khipus del Valle del Santa

Tributos en Khipus del Valle del Santa

Luego de la llegada de los españoles a los Andes en 1532, los khipukamayuqs nativos experimentaron un choque literario: al ser los escribanos locales de sus comunidades, aprendían con frecuencia las habilidades de lectura y escritura alfabética, pero al mismo tiempo seguían utilizando los khipus — artefacto con cuerdas anudadas— para el almacenamiento y transmisión de información. Nuestros…

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[perikali]

The College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots

Manny Medrano cut loose on spring break by analyzing a set of khipus.

So much yet to be deciphered. I always felt that the Incans, Aztecs, Mayans and Olmecs had several ways of recording data, here we see only one such discovery.

[thegrinningcoyote]

Manny Medrano cut loose on spring break by analyzing a set of khipus.

[awidevastdominion]