#qhipu

[picard-schreckensberger]

Qhipu

élément composé de cordes accessoires

Horizon Tardif 1400–1570

Coton et teinture indigo

Perou

[dedalvs]

Hey, there are actually a few archaeologists that are theorizing that khipus weren't just used for numbers. (See: String, and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing and Untangling an Accounting Tool and an Ancient Incan Mystery, both in the NYTimes or Unraveling Khipu's Secrets in Science) Unfortunately, the conquistadors tended to destroy them when they came across them so we may never be able to completely decode them.

I didn’t say they weren’t used for other things, just that the system itself only encoded numbers. They were obviously used for many other things, but the system itself is just numbers—at least so far as we know. Even the other funky knots were numbers, we just think those special knots stood for other things (kind of like in a police code, where numbers stand for crimes, or in hexadecimal, where numbers stand for colors). It does seem likely that we won’t be able to fully decode them, because it seems like the system came in two parts: the artifacts themselves and a master who was able to interpret it. That individual likely had some context that they could supply that the knotwork could not (e.g. what the codes stood for, and any other information that wasn’t gleanable from the structure itself). Since that information wasn’t recorded and isn’t in the community memory anymore, decoding it will always be guesswork, until we have time travel.