Recent study shows even commoners used elaborate Inca recordkeeping knots

The Inca Empire hung by a thread—literally.

See full article...

 

[Albino_Boo]

Late medieval lawyers who ran most of the administration came from low status backgrounds. Largely because they safe to give to power too and could be safely disposed off without causing a civil war.

 

[ReadandShare]

There are six civilizations in the world that're generally accepted as "cradle" civilizations. They are located in today's: Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru (Caral) and Mexico (Olmec).

Caral was discovered fairly recently (only in the 1970's). They predate the Inca by about two thousand years - meaning contemporary with Mesopotamia and Egypt! Archeologists have discovered cities, pyramids - and the khipu system! So, by the time of the Inca, this system of tying knots to record information is already a couple of thousand years old. If necessity is the mother of inventions, the khipu apprently worked "well enough" over millennia.

Interestingly, Caral produced no evidence of pottery whatsoever (something commonly associated with far older Neolithic cultures).

 

[siliconaddict]

I'm figuratively this meme right now thanks to the 1980's animation - The Mysterious Cities of Gold. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122356

 

[Snark218]

Plenty of trivia here, like the woman's diet. But nowhere is the main issue addressed. How do the khipu knots represent numbers ?

Did you read the article? Like, at all? Exactly how the knots encoded data is entirely peripheral to the topic, and could be a book all by itself. This is about who used khipu and why, not how khipu were used. The diet of the woman who produced the khipu is anything but trivial because it establishes beyond doubt that she is a commoner - a class of people previously assumed to have been barred from this type of literacy entirely.

 

[Snark218]

Khipu are kind of fascinating to me because are clearly a practical, durable, and portable data storage and recordation technology that comes from a totally different set of cultural assumptions, demands, and aesthetics than any modern or Western tradition of physical record-keeping. Like, they make total sense in context, but I can't think of a Western culture that imagined or produced anything like it until, literally, the invention of binary computation and computer languages. Marks on paper make intuitive sense to us, but do not necessarily do so to other cultures, and khipu served a set of needs and assumptions that are valid but which we don't share. Same with mortarless, earthquake-resistant masonry, of which there was nothing they didn't know. And conversely, many pre-Contact American cultures were almost entirely indifferent to things like wheels and metal that are core to our entire technological society.

I'm not surprised anthropologists tended to assume that access to that technology was limited to high-status, powerful individuals, but that's a very Western assumption to make, itself.

 

[SvenErik1968]

Plenty of trivia here, like the woman's diet. But nowhere is the main issue addressed. How do the khipu knots represent numbers ?

The Wikipedia article has a short description...

 

[terrydactyl]

Quite unrelated, but it reminded me of a Scientific American April fools piece on an ancient civilization that built a calculator using ropes and pulleys.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24989059

 

[Lexus Lunar Lorry]

Caral was discovered fairly recently (only in the 1970's). They predate the Inca by about two thousand years - meaning contemporary with Mesopotamia and Egypt! Archeologists have discovered cities, pyramids, khipu system, traces of basket weaving - but interestingly, no evidence of pottery whatsoever (commonly associated with New Stone Age)!

Interesting to me what humans can achieve - even without what we today might deem as basic - such as pottery or the wheel.

I wonder if the Caralians had less need for pottery and wheels due to their circumstances. If you have sophisticated basket weaving and textiles, then you can transport and store goods without pottery. If you live on steep mountain slopes, then wheels may be a nuisance or even hazardous when transporting cargo.

 

[Chuckstar]

How do we know that the person that made the khipu used their own hair? Just because hair is important in the culture, doesn't necessarily mean that the khipu-maker was using their own hair. What if they made the khipu on behalf of someone?

Having said that, no real reason to believe such a skill couldn't get passed around beyond just the elite. Near as we can tell, it was a broadly utilitarian skill. While the official bureaucratic roles would have gone to elites, that doesn't necessarily mean no one else would have had use for the skill.

Also, why assume that a commoner keeping track of something would be keeping track of their attendance at a ritual shrine? Why not that they ran a small business that had record-keeping needs? Many of the early examples of pre-writing in Mesopotamia that we've found seem to be related to business records, as an example of where written records find uses in civilizations.

 

[ChefJeff789]

Khipu are kind of fascinating to me because are clearly a practical, durable, and portable data storage and recordation technology that comes from a totally different set of cultural assumptions, demands, and aesthetics than any modern or Western tradition of physical record-keeping. Like, they make total sense in context, but I can't think of a Western culture that imagined or produced anything like it until, literally, the invention of binary computation and computer languages. Marks on paper make intuitive sense to us, but do not necessarily do so to other cultures, and khipu served a set of needs and assumptions that are valid but which we don't share. Same with mortarless, earthquake-resistant masonry, of which there was nothing they didn't know. And conversely, many pre-Contact American cultures were almost entirely indifferent to things like wheels and metal that are core to our entire technological society.

I'm not surprised anthropologists tended to assume that access to that technology was limited to high-status, powerful individuals, but that's a very Western assumption to make, itself.

I also wonder about time. How much time would it have taken someone experienced with this to record information? I am not exactly the best knot-tier, but it takes me a moment to tie even fairly simple ones. It's fascinating to think what would have been deemed important enough to sit through what must have been a significant amount of time and tie knots upon knots upon knots.

 

[tierramisu]

It's fascinating to think what would have been deemed important enough to sit through what must have been a significant amount of time and tie knots upon knots upon knots.

I came here thinking about this as well. I get why the authors of the report are inclined to think that it was something of significance like offerings. But.... if my knowledge of humanity rings true, I'd bet it would be more likely to record something like "I gave my [Incan equivalent of a lawnmower] to [neighbor X] on [Incan equivalent of 3 months ago], don't forget to get it back".

 

[Lacedaemon]

How do we know that the person that made the khipu used their own hair? Just because hair is important in the culture, doesn't necessarily mean that the khipu-maker was using their own hair. What if they made the khipu on behalf of someone?

Having said that, no real reason to believe such a skill couldn't get passed around beyond just the elite. Near as we can tell, it was a broadly utilitarian skill. While the official bureaucratic roles would have gone to elites, that doesn't necessarily mean no one else would have had use for the skill.

Also, why assume that a commoner keeping track of something would be keeping track of their attendance at a ritual shrine? Why not that they ran a small business that had record-keeping needs? Many of the early examples of pre-writing in Mesopotamia that we've found seem to be related to business records, as an example of where written records find uses in civilizations.

Making my first post in months (years?) to ask this exact question. Hair grower != khipu maker afaik. And if it IS known that that expectation is valid, the article probably should have said so.

 

[Trumplethinskin]

I also wonder about time. How much time would it have taken someone experienced with this to record information? I am not exactly the best knot-tier, but it takes me a moment to tie even fairly simple ones. It's fascinating to think what would have been deemed important enough to sit through what must have been a significant amount of time and tie knots upon knots upon knots.

It wouldn't have taken much time. In order to be useful the khipu would have to have been dynamic and easy to add on to, not just a one time document. Something like strand A is how much grain I harvested this season, strand B is how much I gave to the taxman, strand C is how much I sold. Tie a few knots in strand C each time I sell a basket and carry on.

 

[numerobis]

I'm figuratively this meme right now thanks to the 1980's animation - The Mysterious Cities of Gold. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122356

Archaeologists can't explain the flying golden condor.

 

[AusPeter]

There are six civilizations in the world that're generally accepted as "cradle" civilizations. They are located in today's: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Peru (Caral) and Mexico (Olmec).

Caral was discovered fairly recently (only in the 1970's). They predate the Inca by about two thousand years - meaning contemporary with Mesopotamia and Egypt! Archeologists have discovered cities, pyramids, khipu system, traces of basket weaving - but interestingly, no evidence of pottery whatsoever (commonly associated with New Stone Age)!

Interesting to me what humans can achieve - even without what we today might deem as basic - such as pottery or the wheel.

I've visited Abu Simbel in Egypt, where the monument was explicitly dug into the mountain 3300 years ago in order for the statue of Ramesses the 2nd to be illuminated by sunlight twice a year. I came away thinking that I couldn't have designed that without a computer.

 

[danan]

Did you read the article? Like, at all? Exactly how the knots encoded data is entirely peripheral to the topic, and could be a book all by itself. This is about who used khipu and why, not how khipu were used. The diet of the woman who produced the khipu is anything but trivial because it establishes beyond doubt that she is a commoner - a class of people previously assumed to have been barred from this type of literacy entirely.

A minor nit: If lack of meat in the diet of the person the human hair was sourced from is the only evidence of their commoner status, I wouldn’t be convinced it’s “beyond doubt.” Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of potential alternatives. The hair didn’t belong to this khipu”s elite (creator? Artist? Weaver?) or they were vegetarian despite being elite for some reason other than access to meat. Of course, the research may have had more evidence than what made it into the article.

Edit: yeah, I should have read all of the comments before posting.

 

[Fatesrider]

Did you read the article? Like, at all? Exactly how the knots encoded data is entirely peripheral to the topic, and could be a book all by itself. This is about who used khipu and why, not how khipu were used. The diet of the woman who produced the khipu is anything but trivial because it establishes beyond doubt that she is a commoner - a class of people previously assumed to have been barred from this type of literacy entirely.

Maybe not:

“It’s very fine and has subtle embellishments, like decorative braiding on the ends of some pendants. I wondered if this was from a very high-status person indeed,” Hyland told Ars. “It was [a] surprise when we got the results back, and it showed that this person had the diet of a commoner.”

EXCEPT...

Did the woman from whose hair this came actually own the item itself?

After all the khipu was made from the hair of a commoner. In what reality does that mean the person whose hair it was made was the owner of the khipu itself?

The wealthy class has always exploited the common people. So LOGICALLY, it stands to reason that, unless there is other evidence PROVING the person who owned or created the khipu itself was the person from whom the hair came, the more likely explanation, based on human behavior over the eons, is that it was shaved off of a commoner and then made for the wealthy owner.

I think someone is concluding that the hair came from the owner of the khipu and did all the embellishments and such without necessarily having the evidence to establish that directly. Nothing in the article made that direct link.

ASSUMING I'm correct, the entire line of reasoning - that this numeric system was widely used instead of belonging mostly to the ruling class as had been previously expected - is completely unfounded.

 

[AusPeter]

Maybe not:


EXCEPT...

Did the woman from whose hair this came actually own the item itself?

After all the khipu was made from the hair of a commoner. In what reality does that mean the person whose hair it was made was the owner of the khipu itself?

The wealthy class has always exploited the common people. So LOGICALLY, it stands to reason that, unless there is other evidence PROVING the person who owned or created the khipu itself was the person from whom the hair came, the more likely explanation, based on human behavior over the eons, is that it was shaved off of a commoner and then made for the wealthy owner.

I think someone is concluding that the hair came from the owner of the khipu and did all the embellishments and such without necessarily having the evidence to establish that directly. Nothing in the article made that direct link.

ASSUMING I'm correct, the entire line of reasoning - that this numeric system was widely used instead of belonging mostly to the ruling class as had been previously expected - is completely unfounded.

Too be fair I’m more likely to believe a career archaeologist who has dedicated their research to this specific area than a rando from the internet (no insult intended).

However, the possibility does exist that you are right and they are wrong. But that is something I’ll sit back and look for the peer reviewed responses.

 

[numerobis]

I've visited Abu Simbel in Egypt, where the monument was explicitly dug into the mountain 3300 years ago in order for the statue of Ramesses the 2nd to be illuminated by sunlight twice a year. I came away thinking that I couldn't have designed that without a computer.

I couldn't have designed these temples with a computer either, so ...

It is unusual that the dates where the sun shines through aren't an equinox or solstice. But it's easy to do: show up on that day, and measure where the sun shines. Then make sure to orient things that way.

 

[Uncivil Servant]

I wonder if the Caralians had less need for pottery and wheels due to their circumstances. If you have sophisticated basket weaving and textiles, then you can transport and store goods without pottery. If you live on steep mountain slopes, then wheels may be a nuisance or even hazardous when transporting cargo.

Also, there's less need for wheel-and-axle vehicles if alpacas aren't good at pulling carts like oxen or horses.

But the basketweaving and cotton work may have screwed them over in the long run: pottery requires kilns. Hotter kilns can be used for glasswork (unnecessary when you have gourds as natural bottles). From there, you're almost hot enough to smelt metal.

Ultimately unless they magically discovered penicillin, innoculation, and germ theory, they were probably screwed anyways.

 

[numerobis]

Also, there's less need for wheel-and-axle vehicles if alpacas aren't good at pulling carts like oxen or horses.

But the basketweaving and cotton work may have screwed them over in the long run: pottery requires kilns. Hotter kilns can be used for glasswork (unnecessary when you have gourds as natural bottles). From there, you're almost hot enough to smelt metal.

Ultimately unless they magically discovered penicillin, innoculation, and germ theory, they were probably screwed anyways.

They were smelting gold, silver, copper, and even bronze. They could have easily decided to turn down the smelters to make ceramics and glass if they felt like it. (And they did.)

 

[clewis]

Some scholars (mostly non-Indigenous ones) have argued that these modern khipu weren’t really based on knowledge passed down for centuries but were instead just a clumsy attempt to copy the Inca technology.

jfc, the shear arrogance here. "We asked them, and they said they've been passing down this knowledge for centuries. But we don't believe them."

 

[AusPeter]

I couldn't have designed these temples with a computer either, so ...

It is unusual that the dates where the sun shines through aren't an equinox or solstice. But it's easy to do: show up on that day, and measure where the sun shines. Then make sure to orient things that way.

Except that you have to plan for a target that is embedded 18m into the rock behind the entrance statues, and execute the entire excavation, and the excavation also includes building in stairs. Your "make sure" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

 

[Ceedave]

How do we know that the person that made the khipu used their own hair? Just because hair is important in the culture, doesn't necessarily mean that the khipu-maker was using their own hair. What if they made the khipu on behalf of someone?

The source article describes the historic association of human hair in khipus and their users, with citations.

Ars staff, please note:
The DOI link at the bottom of the Ars article just points to the Ars science section. This links to the AAS journal article.

 

[Thegs]

There are six civilizations in the world that're generally accepted as "cradle" civilizations. They are located in today's: Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru (Caral) and Mexico (Olmec).

Caral was discovered fairly recently (only in the 1970's). They predate the Inca by about two thousand years - meaning contemporary with Mesopotamia and Egypt! Archeologists have discovered cities, pyramids - and the khipu system! So, by the time of the Inca, this system of tying knots to record information is already a couple of thousand years old. If necessity is the mother of inventions, the khipu apprently worked "well enough" over millennia.

Interestingly, Caral produced no evidence of pottery whatsoever (something commonly associated with far older Neolithic cultures).

So uh, I hate to ask because I'm not trying to pick a fight, but what was with linking to a site that is just verbatim copying the Wikipedia article while serving ads? That's a pretty weird thing to do, both the site and linking to it.

 

[numerobis]

Except that you have to plan for a target that is embedded 18m into the rock behind the entrance statues, and execute the entire excavation, and the excavation also includes building in stairs. Your "make sure" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Sure, construction is hard, and still is. Computers don't really help with that.

The theory of laying it out is easy -- that's what I figured you were talking about, since that's the part a computer would have something to do with.

 

[Snark218]

I also wonder about time. How much time would it have taken someone experienced with this to record information? I am not exactly the best knot-tier, but it takes me a moment to tie even fairly simple ones. It's fascinating to think what would have been deemed important enough to sit through what must have been a significant amount of time and tie knots upon knots upon knots.

It’s a knotty question.



ayyyyyy

 

[Snark218]

jfc, the shear arrogance here. "We asked them, and they said they've been passing down this knowledge for centuries. But we don't believe them."

Haaaaaaaave you met most archaeologists born before 1980?

 

[ReadandShare]

So uh, I hate to ask because I'm not trying to pick a fight, but what was with linking to a site that is just verbatim copying the Wikipedia article while serving ads? That's a pretty weird thing to do, both the site and linking to it.

My link was to Wiki site! I didn't get any ads, but I use as
ad blockers religiously.

 

[McTwist]

It is fascinating to me that ropes and knots have been used for thousands of years as a form of memory and even relatively recently it was utilized in the Apollo Guidance Computer to take us to the Moon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory

 

[Uncivil Servant]

jfc, the shear arrogance here. "We asked them, and they said they've been passing down this knowledge for centuries. But we don't believe them."

In this case the researchers may have been wrong, but the reasons weren't necessarily arrogance. Archaeologists have found some Mesoamerican cultures that continued using pictograms as artwork, in ways that were clearly non-linguistic and non-grammatical, long after they'd stopped using them as writing.

Additionally, it's not necessarily obvious that the people today who make khipus are of the same culture as the khipus found by archeologists. Consider if we'd had a Moctezoma Exchange instead of a Colombian Exchange, and some Nahua or Inka archeologist announces a puzzling discovery: a story, clearly written in the Roman alphabet, about someone named Beowulf, in a style unlike previously-known Greco-Roman mythology. But the only written records we have are all in some variant of Roman, the similar Greek alphabet, and the very older Eastern letters they descended from. Oh well, it's written in Roman, Beowulf must be another name for Jason and Grendel another name for Styx, perhaps?

I'll defer to archaeologists who study these people and these artifacts, but I try to read up on the many ways that people can logic their way into all sorts of errors when studying another civilization.

 

[zealotpewpewpew]

Hair grower != khipu maker afaik.

Poppycock. The camelid-hair khipu were obviously tied by camelids, which, frankly, is more impressive

 

[A_Very_Tired_Geek]

How do we know that the person that made the khipu used their own hair? Just because hair is important in the culture, doesn't necessarily mean that the khipu-maker was using their own hair. What if they made the khipu on behalf of someone?

Having said that, no real reason to believe such a skill couldn't get passed around beyond just the elite. Near as we can tell, it was a broadly utilitarian skill. While the official bureaucratic roles would have gone to elites, that doesn't necessarily mean no one else would have had use for the skill.

Also, why assume that a commoner keeping track of something would be keeping track of their attendance at a ritual shrine? Why not that they ran a small business that had record-keeping needs? Many of the early examples of pre-writing in Mesopotamia that we've found seem to be related to business records, as an example of where written records find uses in civilizations.

I agree in general, but you're making another modern assumption about the very early cuneiform tablets. Namely that the tablets you're referring to were business records. We don't know for sure that they they were anything more than logistical records. Intent is ambiguous when all you have to go by is a recording of "4 fish, 5 measures grain". Likewise, the khipu don't record their intent so any assignments beyond "here's a collection of numerical records" is pure speculation.

 

[numerobis]

It’s a knotty question.



ayyyyyy

Aymara.

 

[numerobis]

Haaaaaaaave you met most archaeologists born before 1980?

I’d put it at 1970. By the early 00s the young researchers were already taking indigenous people seriously.

 

[llanitedave]

We know that khipu were used for numeric record keeping. But I have trouble believing that numbers is ALL they were used for. It seems like the perfect type of medium for storing linguistic data as well. I'm still looking forward to the discovery or translation of a khipu that contains bits of some Homeric-level adventure, or a Peruvian Gil-gamesh. Part of me thinks it must be out there.

 

[AusPeter]

Sure, construction is hard, and still is. Computers don't really help with that.

The theory of laying it out is easy -- that's what I figured you were talking about, since that's the part a computer would have something to do with.

And again I believe that you are totally oversimplifying the entire process.

It’s easy to say “oh yeah, just stand here on a certain date and you’ll see where the sun lands”.

But now you have to accurately plan a 3D model of your interior room that aligns with that projection, and that model will be located 50m inside a rock cliff that you have yet to excavate. And this is being done in a civilization that hadn’t even discovered perspective for their artwork. The previsualization of the architects is mind blowing in that respect.

And yes, the digging into the rock is a difficult task, but you need that near perfect 3D model to compare daily with the actual construction to make sure you stay on track during the extended period that the monument took to build.

I’ve seen the results in person. I couldn’t design it without 3D modeling software, couldn’t produce construction documents without a computer, and I couldn’t keep track of the daily progress without a computer either.

 

[Albino_Boo]

I wonder if the Caralians had less need for pottery and wheels due to their circumstances. If you have sophisticated basket weaving and textiles, then you can transport and store goods without pottery. If you live on steep mountain slopes, then wheels may be a nuisance or even hazardous when transporting cargo.

Pottery pre dates throwing on a wheel. Hand building using coils was used 10-15 thousand before the invention of pottery wheel.