Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Neal Stephenson was right! Its Snow Crash!
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
I'd be *really* impressed if they had Duke Nukem 3.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
That means that the Incas were a bit advanced! :P
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
And if they washed and shrank them, would that have been data compression?
SCO to Hell
The more we learn, the more we forget. For example, who can tell me the best mix for bronze? Not many now. How about what's best to plant after sowing rye for two years? As we continue to move into a more technological society, there is quite a bit of knowledge we are losing. Remember the famous ancient battery?
I'd suggest that if we got off of our superiority high horse, we'd find that we've always been quite ingenious. 7-bit though, that's what I find interesting. Wonder where 7 bits comes from. 10 or 5 --that I'd understand. 7, perhaps someone who'd been in a terrible accident?!
...tizzyd
that the Incas OWN SCO ????
The Chinese I Ching uses 6 bit binary to map 64 symbols, one bit essentially being a 'yes' or 'no' answer from a form of oracle. There's a bit more math behind it, but that's the core of it.
The symbols provide an array of wisedom and advice for those who map them.
Oddly enough, Terence McKenna managed to calculate the end of the world to December 21, 2012 using I Ching, while the Incas (Or was it Mayas? I confuse them.) calculated it to the same date. - Behold the powers of binary.
All rites reversed 2010
So that's prior art to their 1's and 0's patent then.
Is it binary because it has NOTs, or binary because it has KNOTs?
for a short info:
:-)
it was seven binary choices the maker could make,
like type of cord, spin direction, etc, times 24 colours, which equals a 2^6*24, similar in construction to common IEEE float data type.
you have 7 digits for the information, and a not fully used 5 digit binary for selection of "ctrl-shift-meta-alt-cokebottle" modifiers.
basically: incas invented the earlies EMACS
We use binary code to be able to display strings in 24 bit color and they use strings in 24 colors to display binary code. The circle is complete.
5 and 10 are natural numbers because we have ten fingers, ten toes, etc. I see two possibilities: 1. The guy who invented this numbering system lost three fingers during an accident involving a rope, a pully, and a large block of sun-dried mud-brick. 2. The aliens who taught it to the Incas had seven fingers.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
In other news, SCO is suing Harvard University for $1 Billion, for patent infringement.
A spokesperson for SCO said "One of the khipu contains binary representation of UNIX code, we can't tell you which khipu it is, but anyone who has read, heard or mentioned the Inca civilisation owes us money, and we will be seeking damages."
A spokesperson for the Inca civilisation was unable to comment due to being mummified.
The Mayan calendar is counting down to the release of Duke Nukem Forever!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
That seventh bit must have been for the evil bit. Those guys were way ahead of their time !
Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Ron Nesen
That is a poor interpretation. 1536 possibilities allows someone to encode 10.6 bits of information. To encode 1536 "separate units" of information, each unit must represent no more than 1/145th of a bit. That is a very, very small amount of information, equivalent to having someone tell you something you were already 99.5% sure was true, such as "wow, this poker hand is not a straight!" or "guess what, my birthday this year does not fall on Friday the 13th".
It may be closer to the truth to say their knot language had 1536 different symbols, as compared with the 50-or-so letters, numbers, and punctuation marks we use in English.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
10 is actually *not* a natural base to work with - it's quite unfriendly to working in small fractions (try adding one half + one third on your ten fingers). More natural bases to use if you're a culture seriously working out math for the first time are 12 (evenly divisible by 2,3,4) or 60 (divisible by 2,3,4,5). [pssst - look at a clock]. Nobody who had to do calculations for a living would have picked base 10 - I'm sure it was a management decision.
3) imagine a beowulf cluster of these things
We have those.
We call them sweaters.