WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Khipu 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.360 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm INCA Josh, and 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:10.520 there's INCA Chuck and INCA Jerry's over there. So this 0:00:10.560 --> 0:00:13.880 is an INCA cast. Stuff. You should INCA short stuff, 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:19.400 you should INCA. Do you like that one? Huh yeah, 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:24.440 I'm surprised. Just dumb enough. Wait what do you mean, Oh, 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:26.640 I mean dumb in a good way. A dumb joke 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.480 is what my one of my biggest compliments. You know, 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.760 we have really been hit with the accusations of dad 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.400 jokes a lot more frequently lately. Have you noticed, well 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.239 more than we did ten years ago. Yeah, you know, 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:42.720 we're getting older and that's when dad jokes start creeping in. 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.360 So these people are right, they are correct. Man, never 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:48.479 would have thought I'd live to see the day. Literally, 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.760 that's right. We we we still stopped before we hit puns. Yeah, 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.640 we're no strickling. Nope, that's ageless. That's just some sort 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:01.920 of mental defect. Has nothing to do with age. Yeah. 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.480 Not ageless is in timeless and you could do that 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:07.760 anytime and it's great, right, Yeah, the opposite of that. 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:13.080 So Chuck, speaking of um opposites of that, let's talk 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.920 about whether or not the INCA actually ever created a 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:21.160 written language of any sort. Yeah, this was cool, and 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.160 I would love to do a longer form show on 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:28.240 the Inca period the Inca people, because, man, when you 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.479 when you start poking around a little bit, uh, the 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:37.600 things that they achieved and when it happened, it's pretty striking. Well, 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:39.440 you know, we did an episode called how did a 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.240 hundred and sixty eight Conquistadors bring down the Inca Empire? 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.199 Did we Really? That was a good one, But I'm 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:48.560 sure there's still plenty more to talk about with them. 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:52.000 We could do one just on the Inca I'll bet yeah. So, Uh, 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.280 I mean, here's here's a couple of things in the 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:59.480 way of an overview. Uh, they had the largest pre 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:03.920 columbia An empire in the America's a lot of people 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:06.880 during the Bronze Age. And you're not successful as a 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:09.320 people that that that can grow and thrive like that 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:13.840 unless you're doing some of these things like building roads 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:18.480 to the tune of twenty five thousand miles of highway, right, 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:22.600 that's amazing. Yeah, there was something like twelve I saw 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:27.639 ten to twelve million people in the Inca Empire who 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:31.520 were walking along the twenty five thousand miles of highway, 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.120 which by the way, cut through the Andies. It was 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.760 largely in the Andes, up in the Andes, which was 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.600 not a hospitable place to form a civilization in the 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.280 first place, no man, but they did. They thrived where 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:48.600 it was dry and harsh and steep, and they were 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:54.160 able to engineer like the kind of farmland at the altitudes, 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:57.320 at these altitudes that you would never think would be possible, 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:02.640 like millions of acres of high altitude terrorist farms. And 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:04.959 the way that I saw that the whole thing worked 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:09.079 was there were clans and villages and groups that all 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:13.120 kind of um. They did their own thing, and they 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.480 paid tribute to the what you would call kind of 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:19.080 the federal government, the Inca chiefs, the people um who 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.800 were who had the whole empire together, and then the 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:26.760 Inca who were running the show, would in turn provide 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.000 these these people, like the farmers and the villages and 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.800 the clans with stuff they needed. It bore a striking 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:38.080 resemblance to like Soviet communism. Yeah, and they kept it 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:40.520 going for about a hundred and fifty years again until 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:44.040 the Spans showed up. They were they were very powerful 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:46.800 empire But the weird thing about the Inca is that 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:49.080 they were able to do all this that included math 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:54.400 and abstract thought and um major like socio political administration. 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:59.800 They appeared to have done it without any written language whatsoever. 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.400 That's been basically the way that people have viewed the 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:04.920 Inca for a very long time. Yeah, which is is 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.080 remarkable because it's not like, oh, well, this was back 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.080 during the Bronze Age, like the Maya had written languages, 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:15.480 the az Text did, Mesopotamians did, Egyptians of course did, 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.320 Chinese did. So a lot of people were writing things 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:25.480 down and uh, it appeared and we're still not super sure, 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:30.799 but or are we Like, can we say definitively we're 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:34.000 almost but no, I don't think we can definitively say 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.480 it is sure starting to look that way, all right, 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.200 So let's let's get to the sort of the heart 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:41.080 of the story. Then, is is it? I believe it's 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.600 pronounced keepu k h I p you or or key 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:50.080 q u i p u r, which would also be 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.400 pronounced keep who right. But if you look this up 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:55.400 on the internet, if you can pull your car over, whatever, 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:59.039 don't anything dangerous. They are these really kind of cool. 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.760 It looks like Macromay almost. These knotted which I know 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:07.479 you like, uh, these knotted links of cord made from cotton. 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:12.440 Sometimes sometimes it's a llama or alpaca wool. And you 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.760 would see them hung up in rows that looks like 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:19.159 like from a curtain rod or something from but that 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:21.719 that curtain rod is really like a thicker central rope 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:24.960 and these things would just hang down and for many 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.159 many years someone more color coded. But for many years 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:34.000 people thought that these were just like art, right arts crafts, 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.000 that kind of thing, like something somebody would do when 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.680 they were bored, you know. And a lot of them 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.480 were lost because there's the Spanish. When they showed up, 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:44.000 the found them everywhere and they were like, well, I 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:47.080 don't know what this is, so I'm just gonna burn them. Yeah, 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.919 I'm gonna kill everybody and burn everything. And so for 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:52.440 a long time people, yeah, they just had them in museums. 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:56.200 They were they were ink and relics of an empire 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.280 that had crumbled and gone away. So people are like, 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.920 we gotta preserve these, and they took them to be museums. Um. 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:04.640 But it wasn't until the nineteen twenties that a guy 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.480 named Leland Locke, who was studying them at the Museum 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.400 of Natural History in New York, who said, you know what, 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:16.080 I think these actually are symbolic. I think they encode information, 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:19.200 and I think that they probably are used to kind 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.640 of tabulate things. And he he was right, boy, that 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.840 sounds like a good cliffhanger, my friend. Okay, I should 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:29.600 take out that he was right part then? But was he? 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:52.640 Well find out right after this he was okay, so 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.920 he was right. Yeah, he was to right. Leland Luck 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.719 was correct. And what he found was that these uh 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:04.320 the keep who uh nots, We're definitely used. And this 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.279 is the part that we for sure know. Um. It 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.440 was sort of like a calculator or an abacus um 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:14.080 or a file that you would use to to like 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:16.400 instead of writing down numbers and putting in at a 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.840 file cabinet, you would not this thing up to represent 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:22.520 like a census or something like that, or maybe how 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:27.160 much you know, how many cowbrains you had on hand 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.680 in the back, or how many llamas you had cowbrains. 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.160 Sure they probably make cowbrains, right, I don't think so. 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.960 I think that's how rumors get started. Chunking. Okay, well, 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.000 whatever there whatever they want to keep track of. It 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:44.600 served as as an abacus essentially. Yeah, it's storied information, 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:46.920 like they kept track of all that tribute that was 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:50.360 coming in from the hundred and thirty different clans under them, 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:52.360 like it was. It was. It was a way to 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.240 store information. But that is boring and pedestrian, and it's 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.920 still says that the Inca managed to keep track of 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.000 all this and do all this stuff without a written 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.160 language like that does not happen. Usually you have a 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:09.000 written language and then math develops later. The Inca developed 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.280 all this, or it appeared that they did without a 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.000 written language, but that's just what it seemed to be. 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:17.679 Like nobody could figure out or see any written language 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.080 in this for a very long time. Well, and here's 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.560 the thing too, uh that I didn't mention. It's not 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:25.720 as simple as I have ten lama, so I'm gonna 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.680 te ten knots on this string. Yeah. So it was 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:30.640 like the height of the knot and where it was 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:34.000 positioned on the cord. Uh. It all symbolized different things. 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:38.080 The color symbolize something they had had multiples like one 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:40.160 thing the way you know it could be done in 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.640 such a way or represented a hundred or a thousand. 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.720 Uh So it wasn't just like you know, eight beads 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.160 means eight cows, right. Yeah. So like, um, if you 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.080 have three knots, right, and the top one has like 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:55.079 five loops, in the middle one has five loops, in 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.400 the bottom one has two loops, what you're seeing is 0:08:57.480 --> 0:08:59.920 five hundred and fifty two. Like the top one is 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.800 the hundreds column, the middle ones the tens, and the 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.720 lower ones of the singles. Um. So yeah, and so 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.360 like there was it wasn't just like one yeah counting 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.360 off like that was much much more sophisticated that and 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.520 you know, the color that that they used, the type 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.280 of material that they used, the direction that not was 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.320 tied in the number of loops that had. There are 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:23.360 all sorts of things. So when you when you take that, 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:25.880 you know, if you have three different dimensions or five 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.400 or seven or ten different dimensions of something, um, those 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:31.720 things start to interact and now you have a lot 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.160 of different symbols to choose from doingcode information. But again, 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:38.440 everyone just thought that it was just numbers that they 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:42.000 were encoding until the I think the nineteen nineties when 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:46.840 a Harvard anthropologist named Gary Urton um who spent years 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:51.839 working on analyzing these finally was like, no, there's there's 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.800 words in here, there's names in here. And if there's 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:59.120 names in here, symbols of names, then that means that 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:03.199 they're encoding more than just numbers. They're encoding abstract thoughts 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:08.200 like a language does. Yeah, and and Burton started to 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.600 look into this because, like, despite all the great work 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:14.640 Locke did to crack this code about accounts, he pretty 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:17.920 much did, there were still a bunch of these UH 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:21.600 configurations that did not fit with the rest. And he 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.520 always just sort of thought those were outliers and maybe 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:27.840 those were arts and crafts or for ceremonies or something. 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:29.960 But it was Urton who picked that back up and 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:32.640 was like, I don't know, man, why would they go 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:36.800 through all this trouble to design this intricate numerical recording 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:39.960 system and then just have the same exact thing, just 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.160 be crafty. He's like, there's something else going on here, 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:48.440 right exactly? So Um he was, I guess teaching a 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:53.480 freshman economic student named Manny Madrono who managed to crack 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:57.160 a little bit more of the code um and and 0:10:57.480 --> 0:10:59.600 was the one who showed I can't remember exactly what 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.240 he showed, but he he took Burton's decades of work 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.040 and in a spring break said, yep, here's some here's 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:11.000 some indications that the colors are actually indicating like abstract thoughts, 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.880 like like green um might be like cattle and that's 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:18.640 a concrete thought. But but red equals war or something. 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.560 So he cracked the coat a little further over spring break. 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:24.920 Over spring break, and he was like, and I figured 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.160 it out and passed me the beer bong, right, which 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:32.000 we called we didn't we called him funnel yeah bong. 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:34.560 I mean, I guess it makes sense because there's a 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.640 I'm sure it's a regional phrase. I'll bet you're right too. 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:40.800 We just called it funneling beer. And by the way, 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.040 you shouldn't do it everyone. It's dangerous stuff, it is, 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:47.200 and it's it's just dumb. I've never funneled the beer. 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:50.080 Oh I did it a few times. It's just stupid. Actually, 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.240 let me let me change that. I can't recall ever 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:55.480 funneling it. I never did any of that dumb stuff. 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.440 Keg stands or funneling just stupid. It is a little stupid, 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.719 but I mean, yeah, it is. I just sat there 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.360 as a nineteen year old on my my credit couardu 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.800 Roy Couch throwing my martini right, was clucking your tongue 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.240 at all? The Philistines. Yeah, uh, all right, so he 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.760 figures this out on spring break. It was a big like, 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:19.600 it was a big breakthrough that not only were these 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.640 uh used for numbers that's been record keeping, but like 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.679 you said, like potentially we do have an entire knot 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:28.240 language laid out in front of us, but most of 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.240 this stuff is gone, Like that's the big tragedy. Yeah. 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.880 So so this is the current thinking is that, yes, 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:41.560 they're definitely abstract thoughts possibly even phonetic sounds encoded in 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.360 these along with numbers. Like Leland Locke wasn't wrong, you 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:48.520 didn't misinterpret it, but he found he found um the 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.199 or the over time they found that, No, there's abstract 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.360 thoughts in here too. And there's a couple of pieces 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.320 of evidence that really back this up. One they found 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:01.200 key poos in burials. Right, why would you be buried 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:05.800 with a an avocus a census document? Nobody would, but 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.640 you might be. You might be buried with a something 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.800 that's basically like a narrative of some battle that you 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:14.520 showed your bravery in and that was like the greatest 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:16.400 thing you ever did in your life. You might be 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:18.920 buried with something like that. So that's one point. And 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:22.640 then a researcher at St. Andrew's University in Scotland, so 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:27.240 being Highland UM, did some analysis of two key poos 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:32.120 that are incin that we're from the Spanish colonial area 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:36.199 or era that supposedly the people, the villagers who were 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.440 preserving these things said these are these two these tell 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.160 of a great war. Yeah, that's that was key for sure. 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:45.840 So these things are supposed to have a narrative code 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:48.200 within them. And she analyzed him and found like, yeah, 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:50.480 there's something going on here. Yeah, I mean she got 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.760 back up because they said, yeah, the different materials means something. 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:57.840 You guys are uh, you guys are figuring this out. 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:02.720 She she found that there different symbols encoded in these 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:06.040 key poos, which is way more than you need for 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.680 um like accounting system, but much more in line with 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:13.319 something like a language. We still haven't cracked it yet, 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.880 but it's starting to be clear that the Inca did 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:21.080 develop a written language. We just can't understand it and 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:22.680 the way that it was lost to history is the 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:26.520 same as if um, all of the monks in England 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.760 have been killed off in dred when they were the 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.440 only ones who knew how to read and write, that 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:35.960 the like that stuff that they encoded in in English 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.520 would have been lost to the English people who survived 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:42.080 and who are still around today but have no I 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:44.520 couldn't tell you what this Bible says because it's in 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.280 English and the monks didn't live long enough to pass 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:51.640 along how to do this. I loved that last analogy. 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:55.800 Thanks man, it's fantastic, Chuck, I appreciate that. I don't 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:57.720 want to push my luck any further, so let's end 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.800 this one, agreed. If you want to know more about 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:02.800 the Incas or keep you there's a lot out there 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:04.680 to learn. Just go check it out on the Internet 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.000 and in the meantime you can reach us via email, 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:25.280 It's Stuff podcast, how Stuff Works dot Com.