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| Photo: Detail of quipu from MacGuffin magazine Issue no.3 the rope Autumn / Winter 2016 |
My interest in the quipu was initiated following discussions with a friend on Skye who used to live in South America.
This is an artefact which has been used since pre-Incan times to the present day by the ancient Andean cultures to keep records and communicate information using knots and string. There was no culture of writing and these objects contain layers of information which we are still trying to decipher.
The khipu (also written as quipu and kipu), means knot in Quechua, the language of the Inca. These artefacts were developed and used throughout the Inca and Aztec civilisations to encode genealogical, economic, bureaucratic and astrological information. A quipu is a number of strings of varying lengths hanging from a main header string. The strings have a range of knots, are different colours, are twisted in both S and Z twist, are made from different camelid or cotton material and some also have subsidiary strings attached to them. These are all ways that information can be encoded. It is believed there were men, Khipukamayuq, literally knot maker or organiser who were specially trained in khipu knowledge and this information was passed on through the generations. These khipukamayuq were located across the whole empire and helped with the hierarchical structure of the Inca administration.
Gary Urton explains how these tools are very efficient in showing hierarchical information. He describes how
‘it has been shown that in their registry of numerical values, khipus display the results
of calculations using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; division into
unequal fractional parts and into proportional parts; and multiplication of integers by
fractions.’
(The Rope, McGuffin no.3, p115).
Specialists are also thinking that more information is encoded which we can’t understand at the moment. This was a highly organised society with no written language.
The Inca may have used cloth, though, to store and communicate knowledge because
to them cloth was a widely used marker of status, wealth and political authority.’ Dr.
Heather Lechtman, an archaeologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
who specializes in early Andean technology, said that "fibers were the heart of
Andean technologies of all kinds, even long before the Inca, and so it doesn't
surprise me that people would have thought of using khipu perhaps for some
sort of writing system.”
(Written in knots, Dumbarton Oaks 2022)
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| Photo: 7 quipu joined together from book 'Mathematics of the Incas' |
There is something intriguing about these objects and the mysterious information that they may or may not contain. They are haptic objects which could be ‘read’ in the dark with your hands, counting knots, counting bindings within a knot and feeling the sequences. These objects were used and adapted over a long period of time over a huge area.
I like the idea that string can be used to contain ideas and another example of this use is the eruv, it combines an idea and a physical reality. The eruv is used by orthodox jews to encompass both the physical aspect of defining a space with a religious concept. The eruv is a string or thin wire strung from lamp posts in an urban context forming a closed loop which defines a space. This external space integrates the public and the private into a larger private domain within which it is permissible to walk on the Sabbath. The word is derived from the Hebrew meaning to join together or mix.
These eruvim, unseen to the uninitiated, form clear boundary lines within parts of cities.
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| Photo: Quipu detail at Pitt Rivers Museum Credit: C Dear |
Links / ref -
Urton, Gary (2016/7) ‘Talking knots’. McGuffin issue no.3 The Life of Things The Rope 112-117
Dumbarton Oaks (2022) Written in knots: Undeciphered Accounts of Andean Life [online]. Available from <https://www.doaks.org/resources/online-exhibits/written-in-knots> [17th April 2022]
Gschwandtner, Sabrina (2006) ‘A brief history of string - from the eruv to the quipu’ Cabinet magazine [online]. Available from <https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/23/gschwandtner.php >[6th sept 2022]
Wikipedia [online]. Available from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu > [7th sept 2022]