Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbomb here with a classic episode from our archives.
Speaker 1: In this one, we peer into the history of a
Speaker 1: recorded language that goes back to ancient times, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't involve writing. Welcome to Kipu, the Incan system of
Speaker 1: recording information with knots tied in string. Hey brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. During the Bronze Age, the Inca
Speaker 1: built the largest pre Columbian empire in the Americas, extending
Speaker 1: along the west coast of South America from Bolivia to Chile.
Speaker 1: They not only thrived in the harsh climate and dry,
Speaker 1: steep slopes of the High Andes, they also served up
Speaker 1: a master class in technical road building that would have
Speaker 1: made the Romans quaken their sandals think it created a
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand mile highway system that's about forty thousand kilometers,
Speaker 1: complete with rope bridges across treacherous mountain chasms. They also
Speaker 1: engineered millions of acres of high alayitude, terraced farmland, and
Speaker 1: constructed an earthquake proof citadel on top of a craggy
Speaker 1: mountain peak one point five miles that's two point four
Speaker 1: kilometers above sea level. They even figured out how to
Speaker 1: freeze dry potatoes. But unlike the neighboring Maya and Aztecs
Speaker 1: and the ancient Mesopotamians, Chinese, and Egyptians, the Inca never
Speaker 1: developed a system of writing. What they did have were cipu,
Speaker 1: or knotted lengths of cord made from lama or alpaca
Speaker 1: wool or cotton. They hung in rows like a curtain,
Speaker 1: from a thicker central rope, which was sometimes coiled up
Speaker 1: to resemble a string mop. These bundles were often color coded,
Speaker 1: although most surviving cepuo are now a uniform camel color
Speaker 1: and could contain just a few strings or hundreds. When
Speaker 1: the Spanish arrived and wiped out the entire Inca civilization,
Speaker 1: they found cupou everywhere, but destroyed many of them. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, a science historian named Leland Locke, studying
Speaker 1: the keepu at the American Museum of Natural History in
Speaker 1: New York City, discovered the knots in the keepu represented numbers,
Speaker 1: and the bundles of textiles were most likely record keeping
Speaker 1: devices similar to abacass, probably used to hold census data
Speaker 1: or to keep track of the contents of storehouses, or
Speaker 1: how many lamas were paid as tribute. He realized that
Speaker 1: the height of a knot and its position on its
Speaker 1: cord sybolized units tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on, and
Speaker 1: the position of a string off the main rope could
Speaker 1: denote things like specific people or villages. But even after
Speaker 1: Locke cracked the code, he noticed that some of the
Speaker 1: keepoo he studied seemed to be anomalies. He figured these
Speaker 1: were used for ceremonial purposes. There are, however, anecdotal clues
Speaker 1: that entire narratives could be passed along through keipu. A
Speaker 1: one seventeenth century Spanish conquistador reported meeting an Inca man
Speaker 1: on the road who carried cipo that he said told
Speaker 1: of all the deeds of the Spanish and Peru, good
Speaker 1: and bad. Cipo couriers reportedly ran all over the Incan
Speaker 1: Empire the chords looped over their shoulders. But finding living
Speaker 1: people now who can help researchers unravel the secret of
Speaker 1: the knots has proved very difficult, if not impossible, so
Speaker 1: KEEPU research has made slow progress in the past century.
Speaker 1: Since the early nineteen nineties, a Harvard anthropologist named Gary
Speaker 1: Urton has been working to decipher what, if anything, the
Speaker 1: keepoos that don't fit the normal mold of accounting devices
Speaker 1: might mean, collecting a database of over nine hundred keepu.
Speaker 1: In the process, Rton has discovered that beyond the position
Speaker 1: and height of the knots, there are other factors to
Speaker 1: take into consideration when reading a keipo, the color of
Speaker 1: the string, the direction the knots are twisted, and the
Speaker 1: type of knots used. Through cross referencing keepoo in the
Speaker 1: Harvard Collection with Spanish documents from the exact time and
Speaker 1: location in Peru where they originated, he has recently been
Speaker 1: able to prove that the direction the knots are tied
Speaker 1: in could denote which clans individuals belonged to. Another researcher
Speaker 1: named Sabine Highland at Saint Andrew's University in Scotland has
Speaker 1: recently found that some keepoos still exist within villages in
Speaker 1: the Andes. The locals there have shared some new information
Speaker 1: about them, for instance, that the different materials used in
Speaker 1: the strings is significant and their understanding is that the
Speaker 1: devices were used to tell stories of warfare. Highland also
Speaker 1: reports evidence of phonetic symbols in the strings. It could
Speaker 1: be for all their ingenuity, the Inca has never learned
Speaker 1: to use symbolic written language, But it looks like they
Speaker 1: may have been just a little more creative with their
Speaker 1: storytelling than any other major civilization to date. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article Unraveling Peopoo the Inca not
Speaker 1: Language on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Jesslin Shields. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffwork
Speaker 1: dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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