davies_roy99@... (Roy Davies) wrote in message news:<8df3aa72.0306230510.700c6a3e@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."
>
> 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.
>
> 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
The Incan quipu was derivitive of the Marquesan, Fujian, Taiwanese and
Hawaiian knotted cord systems which preceded the Incan quipu by many
centuries.
Duncan Craig |