Communicating and writing with the threads: the incredible language of the quipu in pre -Columbian peru

In the For pre -Columbian There was a very effective way to take into account important numerical information such as accounting, the passage of time, taxes and censuses: i Quiup(or KIPU), term that in the native language of the Peruvian plateaus, the quechualiterally means “node“. The Inca civilization did not have a writing system, but i Quiup They constituted an effective method to communicate information closely linked to the administration of settlements, foodstuffs and the army at a distance.

THE Quiup they were composed of A series of threadsmade of cotton or blade or alpaca wool. The color of the threads, theirs thicknessand the position Nodes constituted a standardized decimal system to write down numerical information of various kinds. In the past, some scholars have tried to glimpse in the combination of the threads a real alphabetical system, but there is no concrete proof of this. It was a simple but effective system: still today some Quechua from Peru use simple Quiup to take into account the domestic accounting.

A Quiup it was formed by a main rope, from which they pended many secondary ropes, often with further branches. The knots were made in specific positions and could be simple or composed. The color of the ropes also had a meaning, and inside the Inca empire there were gods officials responsible for their reading, i Quipucamayocwho took into account trade and census. THE Quiup They were legible starting from the horizontal support thread, from which all the others were hanging. The position of the knots and the type of knot represented the numbers in a decimal system. The lower knots represented the unitthose higher the tensthen the hundredsand so on. They probably also existed combinations which represented standardized formulas, whose interpretation was lost.

Although it seems that i Quiup were already used by the CAUL CULTURE In the second millennium a. C., The first artifacts of this kind found by archaeologists certainly interpreted are given to end of the 1st millennium a. C.to the period of the Culture Paracas. The system of Quiup It developed during the first millennium of. C., and then improve in the period of the Inca empire (XII-XVI century). In the Peruvian plateau, i Quiup they were delivered to the various administrators by Chaskiskilled runners able to cover thousands of km. With the Spanish conquest of Peru in second half of the 16th centurythe system of Quiupas well as the entire Incaic civilization, entered into crisis. These account tools, considered a legacy of the past pay, came burnt And prohibitedreplaced by Spanish writing, and today there are very few who have been preserved from the Inca period.