Week 5: Quipus and Fowler

Last week, we visited the Fowler Museum to see their exhibition. It was my first time visiting the museum, and I was amazed by all of their artifacts displayed. Some of these artifacts are of the 18th or 19th century and preserved to this day. I definitely need to come back to the Fowler museum to have a better look at everything in the exhibition! (Fowler photo)

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In particular, we looked at the quipu which was displayed in a glass case. Quipus were invented by the Andean civilization which dates all the way back to around 3000 BCE (Oxford Reference). But it was used extensively by the Incas, which are more recent and thus more well studied. The Incas never developed a system for writing unlike the other civilizations at the time such as the Aztecs, Chinese, Egyptins, and their neighbors the Maya and Aztecs (Shields). The quipu served as their way of communication. The quipu is typically made using cotton, llama or alpaca wool. Unfortunately, when the Spaniards conquered and annihilated the entire Inca Empire in the 1500s, thousands of quipus were destroyed (Cartwright). As of now, only about 751 quipus are recovered from the once golden era of the Inca Empire, which is really depressing to think about.

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So, how do you read a quipu? They were primarily used to document numbers. For instance, this can be the number of castles, properties, people of a given area. The Incas work on a decimal system, so the placement of the knots are logarithmic. The knots closer to the top can represent ten thousands, and the knots closer to the bottom could represent single tens. The numbers two to nine are represented in a long knot with the number of turns representing the digits. The number one is a simple figure eight knot. Here is an example of how knots can represent numbers on a single string (Cronin). This sort of number system could possibly be used by the people also as a way to document currency or trade transaction. The colors and length of the cords also can have meanings attached to them. For instance, the colors could mean how valuable something is. The colors were painted on by natural dyes from plants or minerals. Different colors symbolize various things, just like how they are expressed in textiles. Red represents conquest since it is the color of blood. Green represents rainforests and their inhabitants. Black represents both life and death. Yellow usually represent gold or corn. Blue represents life and water. Altogether, the variability of quipu allows it to tell infinite number of stories.

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Though quipu is a main source of communications, only a few people actually own quipus. Quipus were usually kept and read by a special class of people called the quipucamayocs. Their job was to keep count of the quipus used by Inca nobility and read to them (Ohio State University). Each quipu maker could encode the quipus differently, which adds an extra layer of difficulty when current archeologists try to unravel the meaning behind one.

 

Citations:

“Andean Civilizations.” Oxford Reference, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191736803.timeline.0001. 

 

Medrano is an anthropology research assistant at Harvard University., Manuel, and Gary Urton is a professor of anthropology at Harvard University. “The Incas' Knotty History.” SAPIENS, Wikimedia Commons, 26 July 2018, https://www.sapiens.org/culture/khipu-incas-knotty-history/. 

 

“Cultural Traditions.” HowStuffWorks, 22 July 2011, https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/cultural-traditions. 

 

Cartwright, Mark. “Pizarro & the Fall of the Inca Empire.” World History Encyclopedia, World History Encyclopedia, 1 May 2022, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/915/pizarro--the-fall-of-the-inca-empire/. 

 

Quipus. Ohio State University, https://u.osu.edu/svoboda.33/quipus/.

 

SouthAmerica. “Quipus and How You Can Make One.” South America to the World, 12 May 2020, https://www.southamericatotheworld.com/quipus-and-how-you-can-make-one/.