Anthropologists proposed the principle of deciphering the writing of the kipu, based on data from new sources
The Inca Empire is the largest state in pre-Columbian America. Many peoples were under the rule of the empire, its territory was constantly expanding. The population of the state was about 10 million people, and actually only representatives of the ruling class were originally called Incas, there were from 15 to 40 thousand people. The Incas possessed advanced technologies, some of which were borrowed from the conquered peoples. The inhabitants of the empire built an extensive network of roads and irrigation facilities. The Incas were familiar with mathematics and astronomy, used the calendar, performed surgical operations.
The most important role in the economy of the state was played by the mnemonic and counting system of kipu - rope plexuses and knots attached to a special cord. Today, more than 800 kippu are known, the largest ones count up to 2,000 threads.
The Indians continued to use the kippa after the Spanish conquest. The kipukamayoki, the people in charge of the kipu, appeared in court in property disputes, their reports were equated to documents made on paper. This fact confirms that kipu were used as mnemonic aids to help the specialist extract information from memory. Such "records" could be read only by the one who made them. Also, kipu was used to transmit information by mail, most often this was how accounting documents were created. According to modern concepts, most of the information stored in a pile is numbers.
Information is encoded not only by the shape of the nodes, but also by the color of the threads. According to the most common version, the color could indicate the class of objects referred to in the "letter" (for example, black - time, green - enemy soldiers).
In 2005, for the first time, a version appeared that kipu can contain not only data on numbers, but also text. In an article published in the journal Science, anthropologist Gary Erton and mathematician Kerry Brezin suggested that a sequence of three characteristic “figure-eight knots” in one of the kippu could code a toponym, the name of the creator of the “document,” or some object.
The data on the known science kipu are stored in the Quipu Database Project. However, there are small collections of kipu that are kept by the descendants of their creators as a family heirloom. These "documents" are not included in the database; information on their exact number differs.
In 2015, two of these were discovered in Peru by Sabine Highland, professor of anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Their threads are made of wool (cotton threads were more common), so the colors on them were well preserved.
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Kipu, found by Sabin Highland, Current Anthropology
“We found a series of complex color combinations between the strands. The threads are presented in 14 colors, forming 95 unique patterns. This number is comparable to the number of characters in logo-syllabic writing systems,”says Hyland. The anthropologist explains that this number of patterns is much higher than in the counting kipu of this region. Maya writing also belongs to the logo-syllabic (verbal-syllabic) systems.
The kipu found by the researcher were made in the 18th century. This raises a crucial question: To what extent are these records related to the traditional kipuu of the Inca era, and to what extent were they influenced by alphabetic writing (for example, Spanish)?
An article about the findings was published in the journal Current Anthropology. Sabin Hyland plans to continue research.
Natalia Pelezneva