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Transcript

When was the last time you tried to record something? It doesn’t have to be audio or video, I mean recording in the broadest sense of the term. Perhaps you wrote something down on your iPhone’s notes app to remember the next day. Maybe you tracked your spending for the month using a spreadsheet. Think about how many written words, characters, and numbers you used in each one of those examples, and consider what your life would be like if you had to resort to living without any of those. Without, not just the alphabet, but without writing of any sort. Seems impossible right? Most of us couldn’t fathom having to go through life without letters or numbers to convey ideas with. Think about the critical information you’d no longer have access to, or the stories that you’d never read again.  To many of us, this is an unimaginable hypothetical. But for researchers in South America, it’s a very real possibility in one unique case that has an entire culture hanging by a thread. 

A document that changed the world: The quipu, Incan knotted fiber cords bound together almost certainly intended to record information. 

            I’m Joe Janes at the University of Washington Information School and I’m delighted to welcome here my student, Diego Licea, who researched, wrote, and produced this episode. 

Throughout the Andes region of South America, scholars and researchers have found a series of artifacts known as quipu. The quipu is a device most famously used by the Inca civilization, which existed for just under 100 years from the 13th and 14th centuries. Older examples date back to civilizations preceding the Inca, with one potential example dating as far back as the 26th century BC. The quipu consisted of a collection of strings, usually made out of cotton or animal fibers, with each string containing a pattern of knots. The most common consensus among researchers is that they were used to convey numerical information. The knots made on each string corresponded with a power of ten. For example, if you wanted to describe the number 40, you would have 4 knots all on the spot on the string that corresponded with the “tens” place.. Contemporary versions of the quipu are still used today in the rural Andes as a tool for recording things such as livestock.

When studying the purpose of the quipu, researchers often rely on finding examples where  quipu exist in their original contexts. We often find quipu near places such as storage areas at historical sites, where the patterns of knots directly correspond to an amount of a certain crop that would have been stored there. An empire as vast as that of the Inca must surely have needed some systematic form of recording quantities and the quipu seems to be that thing. Whether it was for trade, taxation, or counting people in a village, the quipu served as a way for the Inca to keep their society organized. The use of the quipu was also something that was held in high regard, as not just anyone could use them. Specialized individuals known as quipucamayocs were in charge of both making and “reading” the quipu. In short, the quipu were so integral to Inca society that they had to make sure that it was being done right. The practice of having trained individuals record and decode information isn't unique either - scribes, for example, were common in many other civilizations and served much the same purpose, such as in medieval Europe, ancient Egypt, and so on.

 While most researchers agree that the information conveyed by the quipu seems to be purely numerical, there is still room for theorizing whether there could be something else happening here. Unlike other major civilizations in pre-Hispanic America, think the Aztecs or the Maya, no written form of Quechua, the Inca language, has yet been found. Today, written Quechua uses the Latin alphabet rather than a native system of writing. Some characteristics of the quipu, such as differing lengths and colors of strings might suggest  that the quipu could have served a literary purpose as well, conveying thoughts and ideas beyond numbers. Could it be possible, then, that the quipu could be a form of writing? Could this be the written language we thought to be missing from Inca civilization?  If so, it would be an incredible discovery in the study of the Inca,  and of the study of language as a whole. And if the quipu really is a form of writing, think about what we could discover if we can somehow figure out what these devices are telling us beyond numbers. Not just about the history of the ancient Inca Empire, but about the culture of a people that is still alive and well to this day. 

Research on the quipu as a form of writing has faced a number of challenges. For one, many of the quipu that once existed were destroyed by the Spanish during their conquest of the Americas after the Catholic church declared them a form of idolatry. This means that the samples we currently have could have been just a fraction of what once existed. The reasons for the quipus’ destruction, while unfortunate, raise interesting questions about what the Spanish knew, if anything, about the purpose of the quipu. They obviously knew it was a form of communication, but to what extent? Did they learn that the quipu contained information, beyond numbers, that perhaps was contrary to their way of life? This destruction of the majority of the quipu leaves us with very little information to work with. It also raises the question of why there isn’t a key for the quipu, some translation aid for some other language or writing system. One explanation could be that the quipu was used purely domestically, and thus a key or translation aid was never really necessary. Another possibility is that it too was destroyed like many of the quipu if it even existed at all. In any case, the loss of quipu due to natural or deliberate means makes it difficult to fully answer questions such as these. Today, only around a few hundred examples of what could be considered quipu have been found. The Incas lasted a little under 100 years, and that’s not even mentioning the potential use of the quipu before this period. This is all to say that the picture we have is relatively small. Not only do we understand less about the Inca empire because of this, but we also understand less about its people and their modern day descendants. 

Whether it’s a collection of written texts or strong oral traditions, knowing the language of a people is how we learn more about them. When attempting to decipher other written texts, we can usually find parallels between them and other similar or contemporary versions. What’s harder, though, is deciphering whether something is written text in the first place. It’s why researchers have found the quipu especially intriguing: it resists common techniques used to decipher writing because we don’t even know if it’s writing in the first place. Unlike something like, say, Minoan Linear A, which we can identify as writing, the quipu sits in this sort of middle ground. We know too little about it to call it writing for sure, but we also can’t rule it out as a possibility. This is one among many mysteries in the study of the Inca as a whole, and is one reason why people dig into theories like this in the first place. We know that the quipu stores information, but what kind of information is the part that’s important. If this really was a form of communication beyond just numbers, what answers would it give us? What stories would it tell?

            This mystery is also what makes identifying the impact of the quipu on society difficult. Knowing the context for the use of these devices is just as important as knowing what the device does itself. Take the Rosetta Stone, for example. When asked about its impact, most people would say that it served as a key that allowed us to decode ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The stone itself is actually a written show of support from priests for Ptolemy V of Egypt. The intended impact of the Rosetta Stone, as well as the information we derive from it, is different from the impact it has on the modern world.  When we look at the quipu, we have a system of communication which because of its mystery could hold a hidden impact on the historical society it was used in. Because we can confidently read the Rosetta Stone, we can learn its exact purpose beyond being a key. But because we know so little about the quipu, we’re also left with questions about the contexts it could have been used in. This serves as another motivator for its study besides just knowing whether it was writing or not. In this case, knowing the exact purpose of the quipu will give us clarity on the types of contexts it was used in, and the impact it had on its society.

This is especially important when we consider that the quipu, along with many other examples of languages, cultures, and writing systems, are under threat of being lost. It often feels like we have a better understanding of Ancient Egypt than we do of some indigenous cultures that exist today. This is in part due to the historical importance, and lack thereof, that is put on the study of some cultures over others. It’s an issue that goes beyond the realm of history, archeology, and linguistics. It's a societal issue where real people don’t know much about their ancestors and the cultures they’re descended from. We see this in cultures that possess strong verbal traditions, where entire histories and languages that have been passed down through generations are under threat of being lost due to a variety of factors. With the quipu, we see a device that was part of a history we know little about in the first place. Research into the Inca as a whole is difficult because of the fact that we have almost nothing in terms of written records, or anything that we know of that could potentially tell us about their histories, their culture, etc.

Despite these developments, historical research in South America has been limited compared to other regions of the world, such as in the study of Ancient Egypt, Greece, or China. To me, and perhaps to you as well, the concept of a completely unique system of writing is exciting. To contemporary indigenous peoples of the region, this could very well be the key to hundreds of histories of their people once forgotten. The people today who are descendants of the Inca deserve to know how their ancestors did it, and the histories of the people who came before them. They deserve to be able to have the same degree  of historical importance as other civilizations. And even if the quipu isn’t writing, even if the theories are simply that, the mystery of these information objects and what they could potentially tell us deserves to be investigated.

I’ll pose the same question I posed at the beginning of the episode. If the writing systems you use today were completely forgotten, with society only having a small idea of how it worked, how would that affect your life? What stories would be lost to time? What things would you never have the chance to learn? What traditions would struggle to pass on to new generations? One can only hope that as humans, we can work to preserve and understand, rather than alienate and forget. 

Works cited

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Cartwright, Mark. ‾��ܾ����.” World History Encyclopedia,, 8 May 2014,.

Hyams, Edward, and George Ordish. The Last of the Incas: The Rise and Fall of an American Empire. Barnes & Noble, 1996, pp. 80.

Hyland, Sabine, et al. “Unraveling an Ancient Code Written in Strings.” Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2024,.

“Inca Khipu: The Record and Writing System Made Entirely of Knots.”YouTube, The British Museum, 2 Dec. 2021,.

Locke, L. Leland. “The Ancient Quipu, a Peruvian Knot Record.” American Anthropologist, vol. 14, no. 2, 6 Apr. 1912, pp. 325–332,.

“Long before the W-2, There Was the Quipu: Accounting Systems of Incan and Andean Peoples.” Harvard Library, 23 Apr. 2023, library.harvard.edu/about/news/2023-04-12/long-w-2-there-was-quipu-accounting-systems-incan-and-andean-peoples.

“Quipucamayoc, Lord of the Knots.” Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, 2003, precolombino.cl/wp/en/exposiciones/exposiciones-temporales/exposicion-quipu-contar-anudando-en-el-imperio-inka-2003/el-quipucamayoc/.

Urton, Gary. “From Middle Horizon Cord-keeping to the Rise of Inka Khipus in the Central Andes.” Antiquity, vol. 88, no. 339, Mar. 2014, pp. 205–221,.

Urton, Gary. “Tying the Archive in Knots, or: Dying to Get into the Archive in Ancient Peru.” Journal of the Society of Archivists, vol. 32, no. 1, 28 June 2011.