translated from Spanish: Why we still don’t fully decipher the quipus, the mysterious incas registration systems in Peru

These are the “quipus” (Quechua word for “knots”) that were a system of recording, accounting and sending messages of the Tahuantinsuyo, as the Incanate was known.
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In just over a century, this empire stretched from Cusco, Peru, to southern Ecuador and Colombia, and parts of Chile and Argentina.
An important part of the legacy of this civilization was precisely the quipus. But scholars still don’t fully know what things they recorded or related, and here’s why the mystery remains.
What do you know about quipus?
Around 1,000 quipus are currently preserved in museums in Germany, the United States and Peru, and in private collections.
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Most of the specimens were found on the coast and in the jungle of Peru and date from between the fifteenth and mid-16th centuries (until before the Spanish conquest).
Although it is believed that some quipus, made between the 7th and 10th centuries AD, belonged to the Wari culture, which dominated the Andes before the Incas.
The quipucamayoc were the officials in charge of making and interpreting the quipus in the Inca empireMost of quipus consists of a horizontal main rope, from which hang several vertical ropes that carry numerous knots, of different colors and shapes, and tied up following complex patterns.
According to Spanish chroniclers and 16th-century mestizos, who transcribed the translations of the quipucamayocs (quipus interpreters), these devices recorded censuses, payment of taxes, calendars, historical events, authorities, hierarchies, songs, Inca genealogy, herds of camelids, food reserves, etc.
But none of the colonizers learned or explained the method of “reading” or translating a quipu. At least they didn’t leave it in writing.
However, thanks to the American anthropologist Leland Locke, who in 1923 published the book “El Antiguo Quipu, a Peruvian register of knots”, it is known that the quipus were a kind of numerical files organized based on a decimal system.
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Today, researchers are able to recognize the numbers represented in the quipus, according to Gary Urton, professor of Pre-Columbian Studies at Harvard University and expert in quipus, in various scientific articles he has written on the subject in the last 20 years.
Different codes
But the specialists still don’t know how to interpret for themselves what things they were counting or what they meant those numbers.
“We still can’t read the nominative labels, which seem to have been encoded in the colors and other structural characteristics of the strings,” Urton wrote in a 2012 article in the book “Mathematics and Accounting in the Andes.”
Most of the quipus found come from the coast of PeruI mean, the decimal system for numbers could converge in the quipus with other codes, such as the color system of the strings, the way the strings were configured, the position , knot types, etc.
For these reasons, Dr. Galen Brokaw, a professor at Montana State University, believes the quipu is a “semiotically heterogeneous device”, as it uses different codes in its elaboration.
In addition to this complication, Urton notes that there are a few quipus (about a third of those that are preserved) that do not follow the decimal numbering system, if not completely different patterns. Urton suspects these are “narrative” quipus.
Cecilia Pardo, deputy director of the Lima Museum of Art (MALI), tells BBC Mundo that according to colonial chronicles, these narrative quipus “could have been telling stories such as memoirs, feats, poems that the Quipucamayoc read in public activities of performative way.”
Quipu “Rosetta”
The solution to these riddles would be to find the “Rosetta quipu”, as Professor Urton calls it.
The “Rosetta quipu” would be the combination of a quipu and a reliable interpretation of it in Spanish that will allow the rest of the quipus to be unlocked.
According to Professor Urton tells BBC Mundo, there are between 40 and 50 colonial transcriptions, but none fit with existing quipus.
But there are still many documents from the colonies of Spain that are yet to be reviewed and which could continue to be searched for transcriptions.
Today, about 1,000 quipus are preserved in museums and private collections”Our best chance of deciphering them will come when we can compare an existing quipu with a written colonial record of what was contained in that same quipu,” Urton tells BBC to BBC World.
But to find a transcript that corresponds to an existing quipu, would you necessarily ensure that you understand the rest?
Homogeneous?
Urton acknowledges that experts do not know “to what extent quipus were standardized throughout the Inca empire,” he tells BBC Mundo. “There could have been regional or ethnic differences in the register.”
“(But) so far, from what we’ve seen, it looks like they were probably pretty standardized,” he says.
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In his research, Urton collects testimonies from Spanish chroniclers about a “school” in Cusco to train quipucamayocs in a common tradition to make and manage quipus.
“Therefore, we believe that if we find a transcription, it will be a good clue to help us understand all the quipus. But we still have to figure it out,” Urton tells BBC Mundo.

Original source in Spanish