High in the Andes, Keeping an Incan Mystery Alive

[Judi Lynn]

High in the Andes, Keeping an Incan Mystery Alive
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: August 16, 2010

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE RAPAZ, Peru — The route to this village 13,000 feet above sea level runs from the desert coast up hairpin bends, delivering the mix of exhilaration and terror that Andean roads often provide. Condors soar above mist-shrouded crags. Quechua-speaking herders squint at strangers who arrive gasping in the thin air.

Rapaz’s isolation has allowed it to guard an enduring archaeological mystery: a collection of khipus, the cryptic woven knots that may explain how the Incas — in contrast to contemporaries in the Ottoman Empire and China’s Ming dynasty — ruled a vast, administratively complex empire without a written language.

Archaeologists say the Incas, brought down by the Spanish conquest, used khipus — strands of woolen cords made from the hair of animals like llamas or alpacas — as an alternative to writing. The practice may have allowed them to share information from what is now southern Colombia to northern Chile.

Few of the world’s so-called lost writings have proved as daunting to decipher as khipus, scholars say, with chroniclers from the outset of colonial rule bewildered by their inability to crack the code. Researchers at Harvard have been using databases and mathematical models in recent efforts to understand the khipu (pronounced KEE-poo), which means knot in Quechua, the Inca language still spoken by millions in the Andes.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/americas/17peru.html?_r=1

[WillParkinson]

1. Yes, that is cool!

Some mysteries deserve to be solved, but I'm one of those who always things some things should just perplex man till his dying day. (I'm an evil person.)

[dipsydoodle]

2. Sounds even more difficult

than cracking Linear B was.

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[Warpy]

4. The Aztecs used something similar

and the idea was carried north. The Pueblo Revolt in the southwest was coordinated by a simple form of quipa, runners carrying them to the various tribes, a knot untied every day. When the last knot was untied, the revolt began.

It was an ingenious system and it's the only time indigenous people in the Americas managed to evict Europeans for any length of time, in this case nearly two decades. The Spanish were allowed back in only when they'd learned some manners.

The Wiki article is a good intro, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Revolt, but Joe Sando's collection of histories of the region provide more depth.

[Joanne98]

5. Cool!