Well, I'll just have to put a good word for Prof. Urton here. I most definetely wouldn't consider him a "wacko" (though I admit to being a khipu nut so my objectivity may well be questioned). He has worked on deciphering the khipu quite persistently for a couple of decades now from anthropological, archeological and ethno-mathematical angles.
Unfortunately that would be data loss, plain and simple. This is exactly what happened at the Laguna de los Condores (Peru) site in the mid-1990s. A bunch of Inka mummies and associated khipus were found by a group of day laborers. Before a local historian intervened the guys had hacked open several of the mummy bundles and the wife of fellow the guys were working for had washed at least one (supposedly) fabulous, multi-colored khipu with _detergent_. It still has the knots, but it is now pure white.
Re:This was described in detail by Marcia Ascher
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Incas Used Binary?
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· Score: 1
The Marcia Ascher & Roobert Ascher book is a good one, but unfortunately a bit dated. The 1997 Dover edition is a re-issue of their earlier book "Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu" (U of Michigan Press, 1981).
In addition Ascher & Ascher have published the two Code of the Quipu Databook volumes. These are now available as PDF. In the databooks the Aschers give structural descriptions of some 200+ khipus housed in museums around the world.
A more recent general survey of the khipu is Quilter & Urton "Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu" (U of Texas Press, 2002). The essays in the volume include good overviews and treatments of more specialised topics, but the overall theme is investigating the possibility of khipus containing narrative information in addition to their already proven numeric content.
Personally I am a CS major with a minor in Latin American studies and have been working on computational approaches to the study of the khipu. Currently I am concentrating on an XML schema for expressing the khipus described in the Ascher & Ascher databooks and also on building a "khipu engine" with Prolog. I have a beta on a graphical khipu editor (in Java) capable of expressing the Ascher & Ascher databook khipus; if anyone is interested in trying it out, do drop me a note.
And if anyone is really interested in this khipu stuff, there is a khipu mailing list available. Do "echo subscribe khipu | mail ecartis@lists.pp.fishpool.fi" to subscribe.
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Well, I'll just have to put a good word for Prof. Urton here. I most definetely wouldn't consider him a "wacko" (though I admit to being a khipu nut so my objectivity may well be questioned). He has worked on deciphering the khipu quite persistently for a couple of decades now from anthropological, archeological and ethno-mathematical angles.
Check out this article in the Harvard Gazette.
Unfortunately that would be data loss, plain and simple. This is exactly what happened at the Laguna de los Condores (Peru) site in the mid-1990s. A bunch of Inka mummies and associated khipus were found by a group of day laborers. Before a local historian intervened the guys had hacked open several of the mummy bundles and the wife of fellow the guys were working for had washed at least one (supposedly) fabulous, multi-colored khipu with _detergent_. It still has the knots, but it is now pure white.
The Marcia Ascher & Roobert Ascher book is a good one, but unfortunately a bit dated. The 1997 Dover edition is a re-issue of their earlier book "Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu" (U of Michigan Press, 1981).
In addition Ascher & Ascher have published the two Code of the Quipu Databook volumes. These are now available as PDF. In the databooks the Aschers give structural descriptions of some 200+ khipus housed in museums around the world.
A more recent general survey of the khipu is Quilter & Urton "Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu" (U of Texas Press, 2002). The essays in the volume include good overviews and treatments of more specialised topics, but the overall theme is investigating the possibility of khipus containing narrative information in addition to their already proven numeric content.
Personally I am a CS major with a minor in Latin American studies and have been working on computational approaches to the study of the khipu. Currently I am concentrating on an XML schema for expressing the khipus described in the Ascher & Ascher databooks and also on building a "khipu engine" with Prolog. I have a beta on a graphical khipu editor (in Java) capable of expressing the Ascher & Ascher databook khipus; if anyone is interested in trying it out, do drop me a note.
And if anyone is really interested in this khipu stuff, there is a khipu mailing list available. Do "echo subscribe khipu | mail ecartis@lists.pp.fishpool.fi" to subscribe.