Hyland studying a war indicator khipu. (Credit: William Hyland)
Posted on 04/20/2017 8:28:45 AM PDT by BenLurkin
In the study, University of St. Andrews anthropologist Sabine Hyland analyzed string color, fiber and twist direction to identify 95 unique signs — enough to constitute a writing system — and proposed a phonetic decipherment of the khipus’ final strings, thought to represent family lineage names.
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Khipus are best known by archaeologists as record keeping devices of the Inca Empire, which encompassed over 18 million people and 3,000 miles of South America from the early 1400s until the Spanish conquest in 1532.
The strings usually consist of a top cord, to which pendants are attached; the pendants may have groupings of knots and subsidiary pendants. Complex khipus, made under the Imperial Inca, contained as many as 1,500 pendants branched over six levels of subsidiaries. Simpler ones comprised of a few strings and knots, were used by herders to count their animals.
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[A]ccording to colonial-era Spaniards — who never learned to read khipus, but witnessed indigenous people using them — the strings could also encode rituals, letters, and narrative histories.
Therefore, researchers have speculated that, in addition to knots representing numbers, features like color, fiber, cord groupings, and twist direction signified additional information.
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Collata khipus, which, in 2015, village authorities invited Hyland to study — the first outsider permitted to view them.
The two khipus comprise 487 pendants cords, dyed 14 colors and made from six animal fibers, including alpaca, llama and vizcacha—a rabbit-looking rodent. Combinations of color, fiber and twist direction create 95 distinct symbols, a number that’s within the range of logosyllabic writing systems, or those with signs for full words and phonetic sounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.discovermagazine.com ...
Interesting.
The Incas invented String Theory.
Professor Barnhardt of the Maya Research Center, who also studies South America, believes the khipu will be deciphered within the next two decades.
ITS JUST STRING, DAMMIT!
Just think of it. Had Hillary used the Inca Code of Strings to communicate with her staff instead of that unsecured home server, she’d be president today.
This is particularly encouraging. The Maya writing system is also logosyllabic.
If you read it backwards, it says "Paul is a dead man"
LOL!
I think knots are swear words.
I would tie a knot in my shoes and my Dad would start swearing.
Same with the Drill Sergeants.
It says:
BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE..................
gmta!...................
Or, she might have tripped and become a human yo-yo.
Well, technically, she already is a yo-yo.
After being deciphered, will we learn anything important?
I’m a frayed knot.
(By the way, I’m surprised Hyland is not wearing archival gloves in the photo. She’s damaging a very old, fragile artifact by touching it.)
I was going to post the same thing about no gloves!
LOL, that's both clever and very funny, thanks for making me laugh!
That said, I hope they decipher these things. The Spanish & Church did their best to destroy any "written" records of the Inca, Maya and Aztecs and I'm curious what insight to their cultures they might contain.
Just wait until my cats get hold of them. They’ll change history in a minute flat.
“I’m a frayed knot.”
No need twine about it, be cord-ial.
And people wonder why the Shroud of Turin carbon dating is screwy.
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