Slashdot Mirror
Inca Knot Code Partially Detangled
mulufuf writes "It looks like some progress has been made on translating those old Inca knot strings that have baffled everyone for ages now. From the article:'While the Incan empire left nothing that would be considered writing by today's standards, it did produce knotted strings in various colors and arrangements that have long puzzled historians and anthropologists.'"
The Incans did have library's.
We know this, because the Catholic priests and missionaries of the time recorded burning them.
I think you mean the infamous Bishop of Yucatan, who burned all the Maya books that could be located.
Unlike the Maya, the Inca didn't have a written language, which is why these knots are so important a discovery.
Unlike the Maya, the Inca didn't have a written language, which is why these knots are so important a discovery.
They didn't have a written language, but they did have picture books.
Books and illegal book owners were burned by the Christians. Most herecy laws in Spanish Peru did not apply as harshly to native Americans as to Europeans, the ban on books was an exception to the rule.
The khipu were much more numerous and not considered dangerous until later on, so a few survive. But there probably are not enough known khipu to left to decipher them. However, there may be caches of them buried somewhere. There too many unexplored archeological sites in Peru to count. The last remnants of the Inca state set up camp in the Amazon jungle, where any Khipu would have rotted quickly, but there may have been loyal subjects elsewhere in the Kingdom that thought to bury some of their documents.