Khipu are what the Inca Empire used to communicate—but we don't really know what, although many scholars have tried to crack the code. The Inca—and their forebears in South America, the Caral-Supe—used wool and cotton threads, dyed different colors and knotted in myriad ways, to express—something. The knots may have kept accounts—who grew how much maize this year or how many llama were lost in the last storm; and/or personal histories—the Inca were very much into ancestor worship and who you were descended from mattered very much indeed.
The oldest khipu discovered to date were found at the Caral site in Peru, dated to 4600 BC; khipu were also kept by the Inca between the 13th and 16th centuries AD; and although there is not much (if any) evidence for khipu use in the cultures in between it is a sure bet that knotted string continued as a language transmittal system during that period. Hundreds, maybe thousands of khipu were destroyed during the Spanish conquest, who viewed the khipu as heresy. Only a few hundred khipu are left and they may never be decoded.
More on the Khipu
- Khipu at Caral
- Khipu, glossary entry
- Knotty Problems
- Narrative Threads, a book summarizing different possible interpretations of Khipu.
- Cracking the Khipu Code
- Caral Supe/Norte Chico Civilization
- Inca Empire
- Robinson, Andrew. 2009. Decoding antiquity: Eight scripts that still can't be read. New Scientist 2710: 27 May 2009.
