Because the Incas had no written language, they developed a system of accounting or recording that even today baffles mathematicians. This system was quipu, which means “knots,” and the government depended on the accuracy of the quipu at every level.
A quipu might be a few inches long or as much as 10 feet, with thousands of strings. Here is an example of how a quipu might be constructed: The quipu-maker counts herds and crop yields in a region for taxation purposes. There are 100 taxable households, and their products include 25 herds of llamas and a variety of farm crops. The first set of knots, perhaps in brown yarn, might show one dominant knot for the 100 households, followed by sets of smaller knots, loops, and twists to show 42 households with three children, 36 with two children, 14 with one child, and 8 with no children. The next set of knots, possibly white, might indicate 25 herds of llamas with connected knots showing the number of animals per quipus herd, and so on. Crops might be listed in size order: corn, potatoes, quinoa, and so on, with each crop having a specific color.
Counting Everything
Each quipu-maker developed his own system of colors and knots. This is Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s drawing from La nueva cronica y buen gobierno.
The quipu-maker (called quipu camayocs) recorded the number of taxpayers in a region, an accurate population census, the amount and variety of crops grown or products produced, and the tax paid for every bit of material grown, dug, or created.
Several quipu-makers might be charged with recording the same territory (as a kind of backup system), and those at higher levels made quipus incorporating data from smaller ayllus.
The problem in understanding the system today is that every quipu-maker used different colors, knot formations, and arrangements of strings to make his quipu. Only the person who made the quipu could translate its meaning.
Chroniclers of the Inca Empire wrote about quipus and quipu-makers, so archaeologists might expect to find many quipus in burial sites. Considering that every quarter, province, and district had several quipu-makers who were constantly recording every detail of Inca life, surprisingly few quipus still exist.
Spanish priests believed quipus were, if not instruments of the devil, pagan rituals that needed to be destroyed. In their ignorance, they burned thousands of records that might have provided a key to understanding the quipu.
Only about 400 quipus remain in existence, and they were found in burial mounds. Based on the evidence of several burials, the archaeologists were able to infer that bodies buried with quipus were possibly important people of the district.
The first hint of what the quipus meant was unraveled by L. Leland Locke of New York’s American Museum of Natural History in 1910. Mathematicians continue to study quipus, making slow progress to understanding the accounting system of a culture that had no written language.
World History
