Puruchuco Quipu: Knotty Incan Accounting Untangled
Source: Science News, August 12, 2005
A ball of string tied
into countless knots could very well be seen as a source
of frustration. But for the ancient Inca civilization,
carefully tied knots formed the basis of a method of
record-keeping known as khipus. Now researchers report
that the ledger system is more complex than previously
believed and includes a way of communicating information
to higher-ups in the well-categorized Incan chain of
command between workers and administrators with higher
rank.
Hundreds of khipus, each consisting of a single strand
of wool from which hundreds to thousands of other
knotted strings hang, have been discovered to date. Gary
Urton and Carrie J. Brezine of Harvard University
designed a computer program to analyze the patterns in
21 khipus recovered from a site in Puruchuco, an Inca
administrative center on the coast of Peru near modern
day Lima. They discovered that certain patterns within
the strings of varying colors and lengths appear to
contain numerical data that represent summations. What
is more, the information is arranged among the khipus in
a ranked pattern with three levels of authority.
Information is passed between them by including the sum
from a khipu in one level on a khipu representing a
higher level.
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