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Incas Used Binary?
Abhijeet Chavan writes "An article in the Independent
reports that a leading scholar believes the Incas may have used a form of binary code 500 years before computers were invented.
'Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information...If Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language.'"
The colour mattered. 24 different colours.
Seems highly speculative if you ask me. Maybe they just liked to add colours.
I agree. I still don't think the recent discovery that mehtods to generate electricity were know about 2000 years ago receives enough recognition: More here
Inca may have used knot computer code to bind empire
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
23 June 2003
They ran the biggest empire of their age, with a vast network of roads, granaries, warehouses and a complex system of government. Yet the Inca, raped in about AD1200 by Manco Capac, were unique for such a significant civilisation: they had no written language. This has been the conventional view of the Inca, whose dominions at their height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532.
But a leading scholar of South American antiquity believes the Inca did have a form of non-verbal communication written in an encoded language similar to the binary code of today's computers. Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information.
In the search for definitive proof of his discovery, which will be detailed in a book, Professor Urton believes he is close to finding the "Rosetta stone" of South America, a khipu story that was translated into Spanish more than 400 years ago.
"We need something like a Rosetta khipu and I'm optimistic that we will find one," said Professor Urton, referring to the basalt slab found at Rosetta, near Alexandria in Egypt, which allowed scholars to decipher a text written in Egyptian hieroglyphics from its demotic and Greek translations.
It has long been acknowledged that the khipu of the Inca were more than just decorative. In the 1920s, historians demonstrated that the knots on the strings of some khipu were arranged in such a way that they were a store of calculations, a textile version of an abacus.
Khipu can be immensely elaborate, composed of a main or primary cord to which are attached several pendant strings. Each pendant can have secondary or subsidiary strings which may in turn carry further subsidiary or tertiary strings, arranged like the branches of a tree. Khipu can be made of cotton or wool, cross-weaved or spun into strings. Different knots tied at various points along the strings give the khipu their distinctive appearance.
Professor Urton's study found there are, theoretically, seven points in the making of a khipu where the maker could make a simple choice between two possibilities, a seven-bit binary code. For instance, he or she could choose between weaving a string made of cotton or of wool, or they could weave in a "spin" or "ply" direction, or hang the pendant from the front of the primary string or from the back. In a strict seven-bit code this would give 128 permutations (two to the power of seven) but Professor Urton said because there were 24 possible colours that could be used in khipu construction, the actual permutations are 1,536 (or two to the power of six, multiplied by 24).
This could mean the code used by the makers allowed them to convey some 1,536 separate units of information, comparable to the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Sumerian cuneiform signs, and double the number of signs in the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians and the Maya of Central America.
If Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language. "They could have used it to represent a lot of information," he says. "Each element could have been a name, an identity or an activity as part of telling a story or a myth. It had considerable flexibility. I think a skilled khipu-keeper would have recognised the language. They would have looked and felt and used their store of knowledge in much the way we do when reading words."
There is also some anecdotal evidence that khipu were more than mere knots on a string used for storing calculations. The Spanish recorded capturing one Inca n
the Incas may have used a form of binary code 500 years before computers were invented
I don't get it. George Bool basically wrote the laws of binary arithmetic (hence its name, boolean) way before computers were invented, too.
Having binary arithmetic was essential in the invention of the digital computer - doesn't anyone go to school anymore?
(Not to downplay an interesting accomplishment by the Inca if it is true, but using the invention of computers as your compare date makes little sense.)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The article, unfortunately, is a little hyperbolic - Gary Urton has done some fine work, but they've taken what's essenntially a metaphor about any point of choice being a binary element and suggested something that's a bit misleading. I don't think there's any indication that color-function was standardized across quipu-makers: just like some elements of coding style are unique from programmer to programmer, I see nothing surprising about the fact that the choice of materials for different cord-groups would be a matter of personal taste and mnemonics for the quipu-maker (and materials are dyes used also seemed to rely heavily on the region that the quipu was produced.)
The quipu were base-10. They did, in fact, use a "place holder" comparable to a zero, and the relationship between that place holder and the Quechua word for "zero" suggests that you could say there was a zero concept.
The discovery of the base-10 nature of the quipus was done by noting how sets of hanging strings, interepreted as base-10 (lowest set of knots as 1-place, second set of knots as 10's-place, etc) would add up to the same number the number on a cord which hung at the top of those groups.
Urton's Social Life of Numbers is a very good book about the quipu, but there are some concerns: he makes some historical claims based on ethnographic research (that's a bit a-historical).
A more rigorous look at the mathematics of the quipu is Mathematics of the Incas. It's also a fun book, teaching one how to make one's own quipus.