Inca quipus, writing and binary arthmetic
From: Roy Davies <davies_roy99_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 23 Jun 2003 06:10:53 -0700
Message-ID: <8df3aa72.0306230510.700c6a3e_at_posting.google.com>
An article in today's Independent challenges the commonly held belief that the Incas did not have a proper system of writing. It is known that they used quipus, a system of knotted strings, for keeping some sort of records, but they have been regarded as being either compilations of data (e.g. tables of some kind) or mnemonic devices, rather than a true system of writing.
Date: 23 Jun 2003 06:10:53 -0700
Message-ID: <8df3aa72.0306230510.700c6a3e_at_posting.google.com>
An article in today's Independent challenges the commonly held belief that the Incas did not have a proper system of writing. It is known that they used quipus, a system of knotted strings, for keeping some sort of records, but they have been regarded as being either compilations of data (e.g. tables of some kind) or mnemonic devices, rather than a true system of writing.
However, Gary Urton, a professor of anthropology at Harvard University, claims that the quipus contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information. The Independent goes on to say that "if Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language."
Inca may have used knot computer code to bind empire http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=418049
The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/inca/
Roy Davies Received on Mon Jun 23 2003 - 15:10:53 CEST