Re: Inca quipus, writing and binary arthmetic

davies_roy99_at_hotmail.com (Roy Davies) wrote in message news:<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.

They had been regarded by whom? Even with almost complete lack of interest to the subject, I remember multiple reference to this system as a written language. So, what's new?

>
> However, Gary Urton, a professor of anthropology at Harvard
> University, claims that the quipus contain a seven-bit binary code

IIRC, it was not exactly "binary" code because the knots had been of a different shape and the shape had a meaning as well.

> 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,

As I said, chances are that the code was not binary and the computer i not really relevant. BTW, you may claim a similar thing about abacus: at least, it would be closer functionally.

>ut they used it as part
> of the only three-dimensional written language."

Well, the texts on the clay and stone tablets also were 3-dimensional. So what?

>
> To try and prove his claims Professor Urton is studying ancient quipus
> and Spanish documents from the same period in the hope of finding a
> key, like the Rosetta stone that will enable him to translate the
> quipus.

Now, we came to the interesting part of it. What was REALLY innovative in quipus is that this was probably one and only efficient writing system that allowed easily change the history. In all other societies, esp. those close to the Incas (like Stalinist SU, Nazy Germany, etc.), each twist and turn of a political machine needed a massive burning, shredding, smashing, etc. with the resulting undocumented gaps. With quipus you had only to untie the knots and retie them in a different fashion. No problem at all and the current Inca is always a 1st born son of the dead one. :-)

>
> 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 - 22:45:33 CEST