Cracking an Ancient American Code, an Interdisciplinary Field Trip
Submitted by: Elisabeth Orengo, Community Engagement Intern, DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative June, 2019
What does the word technology make you think of?
Dumbarton Oaks began offering a new field trip this spring, which relates to their special exhibition Written in Knots, Undeciphered Accounts of Andean Life. Perhaps, as middle school students, this would have made you think of computers, telephones,or video games, or any other kind of contemporary technology. However, the exhibition tour let the students discover a very ancient and ingenious technological invention that enabled people to communicate across incredibly long distances for many centuries.
Fig. 1: Wrapped-main-cord khipu with color seriation, Wari, 600-1000 CE, Cotton and camelid fiber
Fig. 2: Wrapping detail
The Khipus were developed by Andean civilizations millenia before the Christian Era. More recent, the pieces on view at Dumbarton Oaks trace their roots from the time of the Wari Empire, who populated west-central South America (most of the present-day Peru) from 600 to 1000 CE, and the conquerors Inkas, who became the largest civilization of the ancient Americas from 1450 to 1534 CE. As records of pre-columbian civilizations’ history, Khipus are also helpful to connect with other specific curriculum disciplines. Made of cords and knots, they were carried, sometimes sported as beautiful clothes, from one place to another within the Empire, to display and collect critical information about business or daily life. Highly detailed and colorful, these objects provided accurate numeric data to those who knew how to interpret them. Today, decrypting messages issued through the Khipus is a challenge for researchers who have not solved their mysteries yet. For these reasons, observing Khipus encourages aesthetic description and historical deduction, while engaging mathematical skills and logical thinking.
The museum educator invited students to explore, characterize and try to elucidate the khipus’ secrets on their own. Even though the devices vary depending on the khipus’ functions and over the time, most are structured by a main cord to which several secondary cords are attached (Fig. 1, 3), which is convenient for both wear and readability.
Fig. 3: Inka base-10 positional knot system
Students were asked, “If you were an Emperor, what information would you need to disseminate all over your territory?”. They made educated inferences: khipus might tell about food, people, or geography. Although we know almost nothing of Wari khipus numerical systems, the educator pointed out the fact that having either zero or one knot - that is based on presence or absence - this technology is actually based on a binary system, thus recalling the roots of computer code. Moreover, as we do have clues to decrypt Inkas’ khipus (Fig.4), students had the opportunity to interpret them according to the following rule: each position on the cord represents one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, etc. Multiple of tens by multiple tens, a few knots can create large numbers.
Fig. 4: Rolled-up seriated khipu Inka, 1450–1534 CE Cotton and camelid fiber
Other than the knots, students described colors and their meaningful patterns. Made of cotton and camelid fiber, Wari khipus often included dyed fibers. For instance, the seriation of various colored patterns (Fig.1, 2) could be used to differentiate data about diverse groups of people over time with a single khipu. Colors also contribute to the aesthetic aspect of the object, although it wasn’t always meant to be worn, as the Inka rolled-up their seriated khipu (Fig. 4). In some ways, the latter is comparable to a book rather than a cloth. Designed to be easier to carry on, the bundle of cords is a kind of khipu maintained by a spiraled main cord, in which colorful patterns indicate the topic covered by the khipu, just as a table of contents.
After the field trip, each student created his own khipu to represent his birthday date. We thank you to India Patel, Postgraduate Public Programming and Outreach Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, for her passionate, meaningful and interactive tour of this wonderful exhibition.
Beautifully designed to display critical and mysterious information, the khipus will stay on view at Dumbarton Oaks Museum until August 18. Don’t miss your chance to admire those rare objects, and to learn more about the surprising ancient civilizations of Southwestern America: Written in Knots - Undeciphered Accounts of Andean Life.
