Over the past several decades scholars have proven without a doubt that the Mayans had a written language -- and taken great strides in deciphering it. Now, what about the Incas and the other pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andes?
This book consists of 15 essays by a dozen scholars about the Incan quipus (or kuipus if you prefer) -- knotted cords in complex arrangements that, everybody agrees, were used to record numbers and statistics. Did they also convey thought? Or in other words did they comprise a "written" language, albeit a very strange one in that their communications resembled a bird's nest more than a book? Were the quipus a mnemonic device only? Or could a narrative be transmitted from person to person?
These scholarly essays examine different aspects of khipus including their history, construction, mathematical theories of their meanings, and factors which might lead to their decipherment. It seems doubtful that we will learn to "read" khipus unless we have the luck to find one in a context that will suggest its meaning. However, it seems also that they truly did constitute a system of communication akin to writing.
I thought this book was fascinating -- although the essays are written in dry careful scholarly prose that can be forbidding. The Incas are one of the most mysterious of the non-Western civilizations and the study of the khipus is a real-life detective tale. Not the least interesting aspect of this is to realize that the Andean civilizations, isolated from the rest of the world, came up with unique -- often odd to our perception -- inventions and technology that worked for them. The khipu instead of writing is one.
Smallchief
