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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from housetop work

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to blow your mind?

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: I've got a question I want you to think about.

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Speaker 1: Imagine somebody contracted you. I don't know if he's ever

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Speaker 1: built anything like a ship or a house or anything

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Speaker 1: like that, but imagine somebody contracted you to build something.

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Speaker 1: Let's say it's a bridge. They want you to build

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Speaker 1: a suspension bridge over a chasm. But there is a

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Speaker 1: little qualifier on this request. You can't use any written downwards,

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Speaker 1: so you can't read any words, and you can't write

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Speaker 1: any words. But I have to build a physical bridge. Yes,

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Speaker 1: So you need to get some workers together, and you

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Speaker 1: need to instruct them on how to build it. And

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Speaker 1: you've got to get all your material that you're gonna

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Speaker 1: need in order to build the bridge. And you've I mean,

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Speaker 1: you might have to research yourself how to build a

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Speaker 1: bridge if you've never done it before and you can't

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Speaker 1: use any written down words. Uh, yeah, that's gonna be challenging.

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Speaker 1: Like it it almost makes the only alternative to be

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Speaker 1: for my From myself to build it poorly without the

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Speaker 1: hate of anyone else, because I'm gonna have such a

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Speaker 1: difficulty in communicating with the workers. I'm gonna have a

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Speaker 1: but I'm gonna have all this difficulty just acquiring the plans,

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Speaker 1: acquiring the materials that I need. It's gonna be a

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Speaker 1: huge headache. Okay. Now imagine on top of that, I

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Speaker 1: also want you to organize a military campaign. So you're

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Speaker 1: going to need to get a whole bunch of people

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Speaker 1: together and go rate a village on the other side

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Speaker 1: of a river. You need to recruit your troops, you

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Speaker 1: need to get provisions for all of them. You to

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Speaker 1: make sure they have food and weapons and everything. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and you can't use any written down words. I think

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Speaker 1: this is really demanding a lot of me. I don't

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Speaker 1: think this. I don't see see my empire growing too

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Speaker 1: too much. I don't either. I And this is one

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Speaker 1: of the questions that we're gonna have to confront in

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Speaker 1: today's episode, because we're gonna be talking today about the Keepoo,

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Speaker 1: which are a fascinating record keeping and notation system from

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Speaker 1: the Inca Empire, and that still has many questions about

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Speaker 1: it today about to what extent it represents different kinds

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Speaker 1: of information and what it can tell us about things

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Speaker 1: that may otherwise be lost to history. So I want

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Speaker 1: to sort of draw a picture in your brain to

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Speaker 1: start off with. You are holding a woven artifact between

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Speaker 1: your hands, and it's made out of hundreds of strings

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Speaker 1: or chords. Uh, and it's very old, and it looks

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Speaker 1: like it may have sort of succumbed to some I

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Speaker 1: don't know what you might call parasitism or predation on

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Speaker 1: cloth over time. It might have some fungus or some

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Speaker 1: insect larva in it or something like that. But it's

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Speaker 1: made out of these very old strings or chords. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It might be oven out of cotton, or it might

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Speaker 1: be woven out of wool from a South American camelid

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Speaker 1: like a llama or an alpaca. And it has one

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Speaker 1: thick backbone cord stretching horizontally at the top, sort of

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Speaker 1: like a clothes line. It might be about a quarter

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Speaker 1: inch thick, so sort of like the chords that you

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Speaker 1: would have in your electronics. And then down from that

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Speaker 1: backbone cord hang lots of other chords with different characteristics,

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Speaker 1: some have different colors, They have not tied all over them.

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Speaker 1: They might have subsidiary strings hanging off of the cords.

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Speaker 1: This is a key poo. And if anyone out there

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Speaker 1: has ever gone to an art museum and seeing some

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Speaker 1: examples of fiber art, particularly modern fiber art, with kind

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Speaker 1: of an archaic look to them, that's the kind of

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Speaker 1: sence you get looking at the key poo because it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's intricate looking, it's old looking. But you

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Speaker 1: also without coming in with some prior knowledge, it's very

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Speaker 1: difficult to understand what it's for. Yeah, So these keepu

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Speaker 1: are so fascinating and enigmatic that I think they have

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Speaker 1: inspired a lot of other designs and artists throughout the ages.

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Speaker 1: And so the word keep you comes from there. There

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Speaker 1: are a lot of spellings of it, we should note,

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Speaker 1: so if you're looking forward on the internet, you might

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Speaker 1: have to try different spellings. It's k h i pu

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Speaker 1: or q u pu some other variations, But basically it

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Speaker 1: comes from a Quetchua word, and quetchuas an Andean language

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Speaker 1: in South America, and the word means not And this

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Speaker 1: makes sense because, as I've said, in the strings, you'll

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Speaker 1: see lots of knots tied up and down the length

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Speaker 1: of the strings hanging off the top. So this is

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Speaker 1: a very rare artifact in the modern day. Only some

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Speaker 1: hundred some few hundred of them exist. We can talk

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Speaker 1: about the numbers in a bit, and the basic terminology

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Speaker 1: that we're gonna use in the episode today for your

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Speaker 1: reference is that this this backbone chord at the top

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Speaker 1: sort of the main chord, is the primary chord. The

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Speaker 1: ones that hang down from it with knots on them

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Speaker 1: are called the pin dant chords. And then some of

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Speaker 1: the pendant chords are going to have subsidiary chords hanging

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Speaker 1: off of them, and then there can be subsidiaries of

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Speaker 1: subsidiaries of subsidiaries, and these things can get very complicated

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Speaker 1: and huge over time. But the question, of course is

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Speaker 1: what does it do? Yeah, because looking looking at one

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Speaker 1: you might think, well, this is some sort of an

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Speaker 1: art mop or something. Right, what are all the knots for?

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Speaker 1: Why so many chords? Yeah, it looks like it could

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Speaker 1: be a garment, like you know, it could be like

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Speaker 1: a skirt. You might have a you know, grass skirt

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Speaker 1: or something like that. Or it could be yes, like

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Speaker 1: you say, a mop, a cleaning instrument of some kind

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Speaker 1: of some kind of tool. But what everyone now agrees

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Speaker 1: is that it was not these things. It might be

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Speaker 1: a tool in one sense, but it's an intellectual tool.

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Speaker 1: This collection of strings and chords with not stide in

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Speaker 1: them is a system of storing information, just like the

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Speaker 1: hard disc on your computer, or like a or like

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Speaker 1: a clay tablet or a paper document. It's for story

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Speaker 1: ring information that was useful to the Indian peoples who

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Speaker 1: used it. So it stores information, But what kind of information?

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Speaker 1: What does it say? Yeah, we're getting into the into

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Speaker 1: this area of pre written language recording of information. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is such a fascinating area because uh you you're

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Speaker 1: seeing the emergence of of of written language. Uh that

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Speaker 1: we're talking about notation physical notation of information here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're so used to the way our graphical languages work.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's the term we should use

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Speaker 1: graphical languages right, because we represent them by making essentially

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Speaker 1: drawings on paper or on another surface. You you you

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Speaker 1: leave markings on a flat surface to indicate letters that

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Speaker 1: we use as a phonetic system of communicating language. We

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Speaker 1: operate by Pictures correspond to sounds of words, and those

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Speaker 1: sounds of words correspond to ideas and we're so immersed

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Speaker 1: in this uh, in this system that I mean, it

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Speaker 1: informs the way we think about the world as well

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Speaker 1: as interact with it. So it's it is kind of

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Speaker 1: difficult for a modern view or a modern language user

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Speaker 1: to sort of strip some of that away, uh, to

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Speaker 1: strip our written system away and try to imagine a

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Speaker 1: world without it. Yeah. And I want to get to

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Speaker 1: the impact of physical writing systems on the mind towards

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Speaker 1: the end of this episode, but for now, I think

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Speaker 1: we should focus on the Keypoo itself and look at

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Speaker 1: what this artifact is, what we can learn about it,

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Speaker 1: and what the mysteries about it that remain are yea,

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Speaker 1: and indeed where it comes from, because understanding the Incan

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Speaker 1: civilization is also vital to to seeing like how did this,

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Speaker 1: how did this come to take place? Yeah? Absolutely, so

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Speaker 1: I think that's a great place to start. We should

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Speaker 1: give a very brief, very cursory overview of the Inca Empire.

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Speaker 1: Obviously we can't get into all the fascinating details about

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Speaker 1: this empire. It would take over the podcast and become

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Speaker 1: the whole thing. But but to start off with, the

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Speaker 1: Inca Empire was a civilization that occupied the Andes, the

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Speaker 1: Andean region and the mountains in the west of South

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Speaker 1: America in what is today Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina,

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Speaker 1: And in terms of sheer size, it was the single

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Speaker 1: greatest empire in all of the America's before the European invasion.

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Speaker 1: So the Incas had this vast, powerful, impressive empire stretching

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Speaker 1: all and down the west side of South America when

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Speaker 1: the Europeans arrived in the late fourteen hundreds early fifteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: But according to the traditional understanding of the history of

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Speaker 1: this pre Columbian civilization, the Inca did not have traditional

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Speaker 1: written records. They didn't have a writing system, or they

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Speaker 1: certainly didn't have one of the kind that we can

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Speaker 1: understand as graphical writing system, like markings on a page,

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Speaker 1: And for a long time it was thought that they

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Speaker 1: didn't have any sort of writing system at all. And

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Speaker 1: because of the lack of no historical or written records

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Speaker 1: by the Incas themselves, a lot of the information that

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Speaker 1: we have about Inca culture comes directly from the Spanish

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Speaker 1: conquerors and colonists who came beginning with Francisco Pizzarro, who

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Speaker 1: colonized South America in the fifteen hundreds and eventually brought

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Speaker 1: the Inca Empire to an end. But we should we

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Speaker 1: should talk about a few cultural facts about the Incas.

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Speaker 1: Like one of the things to look at is what

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Speaker 1: their religion and mythology looked like. Yes, indeed, and they

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Speaker 1: had had a really, you know, fairly complex religious system.

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Speaker 1: It was centered on the worship of the Sun and

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Speaker 1: the guise of the ancestor god int but it also

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Speaker 1: entailed a host of other pre Inca belief systems as

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Speaker 1: well as a rich tradition of ceremonial magic, animism, dualism,

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Speaker 1: cults of the mummified dead. And hopefully that is something

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Speaker 1: that future episode of Stuff about your Mind will get to,

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Speaker 1: as we've had some mummy episodes the mummies of the

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Speaker 1: Andean civilization. This is fascinating. We should definitely come back

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Speaker 1: to that. Indeed, magical items, divination, as well as animal

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Speaker 1: and human sacrifice. Now that that god Inti, the ancestor god,

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Speaker 1: has depicted as a human face on a race blade disc,

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Speaker 1: it's an important god of crops in life, and most

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Speaker 1: of their major uh deities line up with what you

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Speaker 1: would expect from an agrarian society, you know, the gods

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Speaker 1: of rain, the gods of sun, etcetera. Okay, so the

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Speaker 1: emty the face on the disc that's sort of like

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Speaker 1: a face in the sun. You're saying, yeah, the sun

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Speaker 1: god essential to everything. Got to have one, right. But

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Speaker 1: then there's also a god by the name of Vera Coca,

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Speaker 1: which is the creator god of the Inca or at

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Speaker 1: least the Late Inca. And so the idea here is

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Speaker 1: that he created the sun and the moon on Lake Tittyicaca.

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Speaker 1: After his creation, he wanders the world as a bearded

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Speaker 1: robe man with a staffing the ways of yeat of

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Speaker 1: civilization to the people. So imagine sort of a uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, a South American gandolf. I'm thinking that's amazing.

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Speaker 1: So the creator god that comes to earth and wanders

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Speaker 1: his own creation as as a sort of itinerant. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like, uh, it reminds me a little

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Speaker 1: bit of of some of the later Dune novels. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: there you go. But but he But the other thing

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Speaker 1: is that this is a very ancient god and he

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Speaker 1: actually predated the Inca Empire. They didn't actually add him

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Speaker 1: to the pantheon until much later, possibly under the rule

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Speaker 1: of an emperor who took the name of the god

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Speaker 1: Vera Coca and died in fourty eight. So it's kind

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Speaker 1: of this interesting scenario we have where it's a pre

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Speaker 1: existing god, it doesn't factor into the early Inca system,

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Speaker 1: but then ends up becoming a dominant one later on. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But of course when we talk about the Inca Empire there,

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Speaker 1: we're not just talking about the the ethnic group of

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Speaker 1: the Incas themselves, because that they went on to create

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Speaker 1: this vast ride that included many different regions of the

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Speaker 1: continent and many different people. So so they had a

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Speaker 1: vast system of social and political organization exactly. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like any really of any kind of imperial religious system.

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Speaker 1: They're going to be these other older religions that are

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Speaker 1: playing into the popular belief system. Uh, They're gonna be

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Speaker 1: regional beliefs, they're gonna be new beliefs. Suddenly God's gods

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Speaker 1: that suddenly find a following with very important people. Uh

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Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's it's a rich tapestry. Now, as

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Speaker 1: for their overall political organization, they established their capital in

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Speaker 1: Cuzco uh in Peru in the what is now Peru

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Speaker 1: and twelfth century, uh and they expanded via military conquest

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Speaker 1: in the early fifteenth century, and within a hundred years

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Speaker 1: they gained control of the Indian population of about twelve

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Speaker 1: million people total. Yeah, and I've read many sources talking

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Speaker 1: about the very hierarchical nature of the of the Incan

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Speaker 1: Empire like that there were very clearly defined systems of

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Speaker 1: who answered to who. Yeah, it's it's easy to to

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Speaker 1: take sort of a Western uh approached all this and

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Speaker 1: and view other civilizations and kind of imagine something kind

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Speaker 1: of simple and primitive. They they've got a pope and

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Speaker 1: a king and all that. Yeah, But but but this

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Speaker 1: is really it was a really rich system. And certainly

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Speaker 1: at the top it's it's headed by it by the emperor.

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Speaker 1: But underneath the emperor there's just a complete aristocratic bureaucracy,

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Speaker 1: and there's in in the military system that keeps a

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Speaker 1: firm commanding hand on everything. And the divisions here involve

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Speaker 1: the central government, quarter league governments of provincial governments, and

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Speaker 1: what they called decimal administrations and so and the priesthood

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Speaker 1: plays an important role in the structure as well as

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Speaker 1: does the military. And it all kind of just tightens

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Speaker 1: the grip on on most of the people in the

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Speaker 1: empire who are just farmers. Yeah. Now, as you mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 1: there were hundreds of years of the Incas sort of

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Speaker 1: expanding their their power and capabilities, but as the actual

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Speaker 1: official empire goes, it was fairly short lived, officially lasting

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Speaker 1: only from the early fourteen hundreds, I think the fourteen

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Speaker 1: thirties or so until the Spanish conquest beginning in the

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Speaker 1: fifteen and thirties, with the last Inco resistance being destroyed

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Speaker 1: by the Spanish in the fifteen seventies. However, despite that

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Speaker 1: short period, the Incas were incredibly productive in building this

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Speaker 1: powerful technological civilization. Yeah. And the same way that their

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Speaker 1: religion was sort of pieces of things that already worked.

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Speaker 1: So to their their empire that seems to be built

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Speaker 1: of technologies that were already more or less in place.

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Speaker 1: But then what they did with them, uh, in creating

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Speaker 1: these unified structure is pretty amazing. Yeah. I read definitely

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Speaker 1: one scholar talking about how the the the amazing technology

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Speaker 1: of the Inca was primarily an organizational or management based technology.

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Speaker 1: What was amazing about what they did was their ability

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Speaker 1: to to organize groups of people to achieve ends, whether

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Speaker 1: those ends are engineering or architectural or strategic social organizations

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Speaker 1: or civic organizations, that they were able to mobilize people

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Speaker 1: toward holes and get things done. Yeah, because they already

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Speaker 1: had You already had the skills out there. You already

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Speaker 1: had plenty of of successful farmers, that successful craftsmen. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then they were able to utilize these uh to

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Speaker 1: create the infrastructure of empire. Yeah. But just a few

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Speaker 1: quick things to name about the Incan technological achievements. One

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Speaker 1: of course would be their their civic infrastructure, So the

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Speaker 1: cities and the roads they have that span diverse climates

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Speaker 1: and ecoregions and dealt with very difficult terrain throughout the Andies.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they're building a civilization up and down the

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Speaker 1: sides of unwelcoming mountains, you might say. But there's also

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Speaker 1: the Incan road system, and this passes through the high

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Speaker 1: Andes coastal desert, the lowland forest. It was complex and

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Speaker 1: use traffic management. And then there's this one fact that

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Speaker 1: often gets referenced because it's so interesting that they had

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Speaker 1: a they had a messenger system made of these messengers

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Speaker 1: known as chots keys. Have you read about these guys? Yes,

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Speaker 1: because they do tie in with our our core subject

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Speaker 1: here today. Yeah. Yeah, So these are lightning fact asked

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Speaker 1: running messengers, and they carried information across these empire spanning

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Speaker 1: road systems, and they would carry with them the subject

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Speaker 1: of what we're talking about today, Like you said, the

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Speaker 1: key boos, these these strings and chords that had knots

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Speaker 1: on them to carry information, and they would carry the

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Speaker 1: key boos with them, and they trade out with rested

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Speaker 1: runners at way points, and they would bring information about

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Speaker 1: state projects back to central administrative nodes like CUSCO. And

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Speaker 1: they could cover huge distances very quickly, and often cited

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Speaker 1: numbers that they could cover two forty kilometers a day

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Speaker 1: on foot and uh and and another thing I've read

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Speaker 1: is that they they boosted their high altitude sprinting power

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Speaker 1: by chewing coca leaves to increase endurance in dull pains

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Speaker 1: and hunger and thirst and that sort of focus. Of course,

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Speaker 1: the coca leaves being the precursor to cocaine. Uh And

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Speaker 1: even here you might say that this is a technological

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Speaker 1: innovation and the use of newo tropics or performance enhancing drugs.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And of course even to this day you

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Speaker 1: can it it's sometimes recommended to have the Coca Tee

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Speaker 1: if you're trying to adapt to high altitude uh situations

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Speaker 1: in South America. Yeah. But of course on top of

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Speaker 1: all that, they had irrigation systems, calculations used for engineering

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Speaker 1: that the Incans had this interesting stone device called a

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Speaker 1: yu panna, which is from what I've read, it's similar

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Speaker 1: to an avocus. It was like a stone device they

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Speaker 1: used for doing calculations. Also, one of the most impressive

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Speaker 1: and interesting things to me is their bridges. They're just amazing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're They're bridges are really fascinating. And this this is

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Speaker 1: something I think I covered for the first time when

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Speaker 1: I was working on how bridges work for How Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com um. The Incan's built the earliest known

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Speaker 1: suspension build bridges in the world out of twisted grass. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about fiber arts here. And this is where

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Speaker 1: I get kind of excited thinking about them, because you

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Speaker 1: think of this this culture where again they're building the

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Speaker 1: empire out of the existing tools. What are we good at?

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Speaker 1: What can what are what are we great at? One

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Speaker 1: of the things they're great at is crafting things out

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Speaker 1: of fiber, out of string, out of rope and twine. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I didn't even think about this connection until now. But

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Speaker 1: we're seeing this notation system that we're focusing on today

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Speaker 1: made out of textiles. We're seeing major infrastructure like bridges

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Speaker 1: made out of weaving. Uh. It's it's a sort of

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Speaker 1: weaving based techno culture. Yeah, it's kind of like to

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Speaker 1: come back to that question you ask me at the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the episode, you know, how would I do

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Speaker 1: all these things? How would I build my empire if

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Speaker 1: I couldn't use written language? Like the follow up question

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Speaker 1: would might have to be what what are you good at?

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Speaker 1: What is the what? What is your what is your

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Speaker 1: your primary skill that we could build all of this

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Speaker 1: or more than that, what is what are lots of

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Speaker 1: people good at? You know, what are what are the

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Speaker 1: skills that we can get lots of people doing for

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Speaker 1: the empire without having to teach them how to do it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So these bridges in question here, they were first discovered

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Speaker 1: when Spanish conquistadors made their way into Buru in the

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Speaker 1: year fifteen thirty two. Uh, And they discovered this this

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Speaker 1: wonderful highway system that we've already mentioned. But as you mentioned,

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Speaker 1: that highway system has to span some pretty treacherous areas,

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Speaker 1: including some some some deep mountain gorges uh. And that's

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Speaker 1: where they discovered these, um the suspension bridges, achieving spans

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Speaker 1: in some places of more than a hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: feet or or forty six meters uh. In Europe, on

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Speaker 1: the other hand, they wouldn't see it. Europe wouldn't see

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Speaker 1: its first suspension bridge until nearly three hundred years later.

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Speaker 1: So they were they were building these these grass these

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Speaker 1: fiber bridges to connect their highway system. And if you're

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Speaker 1: having trouble picturing this, I would recommend looking it up

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Speaker 1: to see what they look like. Is that you can

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Speaker 1: see pictures of them today. But also essentially it's a

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Speaker 1: bridge hanging from ropes. Yes, that's what it is. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And there is one left in the world. Um, there's

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Speaker 1: I mean one incong grass bridge. One one remaining incong

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Speaker 1: grass bridge, and it is the Quechua Chaka uh and

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Speaker 1: and it's there's like a single inca bridge keeper named

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Speaker 1: Victoriano otis Pana who believe it's still alive, still caring

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Speaker 1: for the bridge. Because that's the other thing. If you're

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Speaker 1: building your bridge, your bridge system, uh, if you're connecting

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Speaker 1: your highways with rope bridges. Um in a climate like this,

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Speaker 1: you have you have to continually care for them U

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Speaker 1: with a with a frequency that you maybe don't have

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Speaker 1: to to turn to as much with stone bridges. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was watching a video actually about modern upkeep of

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Speaker 1: these bridges, and they don't just have to maintain them,

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Speaker 1: they have to replace them frequently. So they'll at at

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Speaker 1: a certain period every number of years or something. I

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Speaker 1: think maybe depending on the condition of the bridge, they'll

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Speaker 1: cut it down and put up a new one indeed.

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Speaker 1: And uh and and of course there are other areas

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Speaker 1: where they're really using these these fiber arts as well,

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Speaker 1: so they're they're create creating fiber boats out of reads,

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Speaker 1: fiber armor that's longer pound for pound than the steel

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Speaker 1: worn by conconquistadors, woven slings that could supposedly split a

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Speaker 1: Spanish sword with the stone that it fired. Uh. They

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Speaker 1: also had burial and sacrificial textiles that were also quite important,

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Speaker 1: which in a way that gets into our techno religion

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Speaker 1: episode of of of your Right, because anytime you have

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Speaker 1: a culture that has some sort of technology, that technology

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Speaker 1: is of course going to be used for religious purposes. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna get into that later. And uh, the textiles

385
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Speaker 1: are so important. Textiles, along with corn, served as a

386
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Speaker 1: kind of currency for paying the soldiers of the empire.

387
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Speaker 1: So you really to the point where you almost cannot

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Speaker 1: overstate the importance of textiles and fiber arts and crafts

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Speaker 1: within the Inca Empire. Yes, but so reviewing all of

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Speaker 1: these massive projects and achievements of this empire, I want

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Speaker 1: to come back to that question I started with at

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Speaker 1: the beginning, because the traditional understanding is that the Incas

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Speaker 1: did not have a writing system, and they certainly didn't

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Speaker 1: have a graphical writing system. And so if you assume

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Speaker 1: that they didn't have a system for notation of words

396
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Speaker 1: in any in any way, these achievements they seem almost

397
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Speaker 1: impossible to me, Like how could it be done without

398
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Speaker 1: being able to write down notes about how things should

399
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Speaker 1: be carried out? Well, it makes you think you you're

400
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:27,359
Speaker 1: sitting that runner off right, and you you say, Hey,

401
00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:29,800
Speaker 1: I needed to tell such and such the next village over.

402
00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 1: Make sure you remember it. Hey, we have all the

403
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Speaker 1: string around here. Type a piece of string around your

404
00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:38,000
Speaker 1: pinky finger, and that'll remind you. So, like, how far

405
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:41,120
Speaker 1: could you extrapolate that system? You'd run out of fingers,

406
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:43,960
Speaker 1: but you still have all this string. Yes, And that

407
00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:46,359
Speaker 1: brings us back to to the keypoos that we're talking

408
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Speaker 1: about today. Now, one of the central themes of this

409
00:22:49,440 --> 00:22:51,680
Speaker 1: episode is going to be talking about the disputes about

410
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Speaker 1: what is encoded in the keypoos, what kind of information

411
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Speaker 1: is in there. I think what's undisputed is that there

412
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Speaker 1: is numerical information in there, and that the keeps were

413
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Speaker 1: used to keep track of goods and labor in society.

414
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Speaker 1: So people living under the Inca Empire might have owed

415
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Speaker 1: the state X the number of days of work every

416
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Speaker 1: month or something like that. How to keep track of

417
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:16,440
Speaker 1: the number of days you've worked and how many you owe.

418
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Speaker 1: And then also people are organized into labor groups. You

419
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Speaker 1: need census data to make organizational decisions about how many

420
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Speaker 1: people you're going to have doing a certain project or

421
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Speaker 1: available if you need them to fight in your army.

422
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Speaker 1: And then of course the Incan engineers and architects needed

423
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Speaker 1: to be able to make notes about the products of

424
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:37,760
Speaker 1: calculations used in engineering and architecture and all all these

425
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Speaker 1: numbers we now know we're encoded in the keep wo

426
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,760
Speaker 1: but is there other stuff in them as well? So

427
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:47,679
Speaker 1: here here, we should get into what the Spanish colonial

428
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:51,400
Speaker 1: authorities had to say about that. As we said earlier,

429
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Speaker 1: for a long time, pretty much everything we knew about

430
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,679
Speaker 1: the Incas came from written records of the Spanish and

431
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 1: that's not a great situation to be in. This you're

432
00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: depending upon the conquerors, the alien conquerors, to tell you

433
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:08,160
Speaker 1: how these people lived and and when what they're they're

434
00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 1: they're not system represented, yeah, I mean there are, they're

435
00:24:12,080 --> 00:24:15,240
Speaker 1: just different concerns. The Spanish colonists were very concerned about

436
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:19,200
Speaker 1: the glory of the Spanish crown, with domination, exploitation of resources,

437
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:24,040
Speaker 1: spreading their version of Christianity, so gaining a deep understanding

438
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:28,119
Speaker 1: of the existing cultures and their technology might not have

439
00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:32,720
Speaker 1: always been at the forefront of of their list of priorities, right, Yeah,

440
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,000
Speaker 1: I mean, the the the system itself does not prize

441
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 1: that so much. Yeah. But more recently, physical clues from

442
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:42,639
Speaker 1: archaeology have started to round out our modern understanding of

443
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: the Incas. I think we're getting a better and more

444
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: unbiased idea of what the empire looked like. But there's

445
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: still so much we don't know. Uh, But so what

446
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 1: what did the Spanish chroniclers make of these keypus. Well,

447
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,160
Speaker 1: one of the things that I found is a collection

448
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: of awesome illustration jens that the Spanish colonists made of

449
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: the keeps, explaining them. Just a few here from the

450
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, one group by Guaman Poma de Ayala and

451
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:14,640
Speaker 1: another group by Martin de Marua. What are we seeing here, Robert, Well,

452
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 1: we are seeing drawings of individuals holding these keepos, which

453
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: look again at times just kind of like mops. Like that.

454
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:26,840
Speaker 1: They're not the most detailed representations of what's going on,

455
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 1: I mean, more so in the Marua illustrations than in

456
00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: the earlier ones. But but then on the other hand,

457
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: you do see an attempt to document and understand what's

458
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: going on with this with the system. Yeah. One example

459
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:42,200
Speaker 1: is there's it almost looks like a political cartoon. It's

460
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 1: just sort of a black and white drawing of someone

461
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:48,359
Speaker 1: in UH with a with a ponytail and UH and

462
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:51,880
Speaker 1: a tunic of some kind, holding one of these keypoos,

463
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: and then there's a little sign extending off of it

464
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:58,640
Speaker 1: that has the word for letter in Spanish, indicating that this,

465
00:25:58,640 --> 00:26:02,879
Speaker 1: this election of strings is a message that's being carried.

466
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: So I think this is supposed to be an illustration

467
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:08,160
Speaker 1: of the chus keys, but of course there are written

468
00:26:08,160 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 1: accounts also. I want to read one quote from the

469
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: Jesuit missionary Jose de Acosta, and this is cited in

470
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: translation in the Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology,

471
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,400
Speaker 1: and Medicine and Non Western Cultures edited by Elaine Selene

472
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: and translated by the entry author Molly Tune. So here's

473
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: this selection. They are keeps, memorials or events registered in

474
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: strings on which diverse knots and diverse colors meant different things.

475
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: It's incredible what they achieved this way. How much books

476
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:44,639
Speaker 1: can say about history and laws and ceremonies and business accounts.

477
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: The keep wus supply all this so promptly that it's admirable.

478
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: In order to have these keep us or memorials, there

479
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 1: were official representatives that today are called Keepu Kamayo, who

480
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:57,959
Speaker 1: were obligated to give accounts of everything like the public

481
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 1: scribes here, and as such they have to be given

482
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:06,240
Speaker 1: full credit. For diverse genres like war, government, tribute, ceremony, land.

483
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,880
Speaker 1: There were diverse keeps or strings, and in each handling

484
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 1: of these, so many knots and intricacies and strings were attached.

485
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:17,600
Speaker 1: Some were colored, some green, some blue, others white, and

486
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:20,680
Speaker 1: so many differences that just as we form twenty four

487
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:24,360
Speaker 1: letters in different ways to make such an infinity of words,

488
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:28,920
Speaker 1: these knots and colors make innumerable meanings of things. And

489
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,320
Speaker 1: there there are also stories of keeps being used for

490
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 1: narrative purposes in other contexts. For example, somebody might be

491
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,480
Speaker 1: in the middle of a court case before before a

492
00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:39,120
Speaker 1: governor and they have to bring a keep who out

493
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: to give testimony in the court. So it's it's serving

494
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 1: as an official record of transactions or some sort of

495
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 1: business history. That the keep who is is the recorded documents.

496
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: So we're seeing the not only the externalization of human thought, uh,

497
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: but and not only the use of the keep who

498
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 1: as a as a way to remember something and convey information,

499
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:06,720
Speaker 1: but just to store it and immortalize it. Yeah. And

500
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: so the question here is can we trust the Spanish

501
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: understanding of what they claimed to see? I mean, are

502
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 1: these accounts accurate? Are are that? Is it really true

503
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:18,920
Speaker 1: that you could take a keep who and read testimony

504
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: from it. You can take a keep who and read

505
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:26,439
Speaker 1: histories of governments and uh, and even read religious things, uh,

506
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:32,360
Speaker 1: ceremonial incantations, read all of these sort of literary formats

507
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:36,159
Speaker 1: from it. Can you fit a history into knots? And

508
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: that's still the question for researchers in this area. So

509
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: we'll we'll get into the modern quest to solve the

510
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: mystery of the knots in a moment. At first, we

511
00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:53,680
Speaker 1: should take a quick break. All right, we're back. So

512
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 1: we're trying to unlock the mysteries of the keep Who's

513
00:28:57,040 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 1: But one of the problems here, of course, is that

514
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: the Empire is long gone. Most of the key pos

515
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: they're long gone as well. Yeah. So after the Spanish

516
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 1: conquest of the region, the keypoos were just used less

517
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: and less frequently. And there are a bunch of reasons

518
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: for that. There's probably some stigma against it because of

519
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: the cultural power of the Spanish as the colonists, they

520
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 1: didn't like these things. They thought of them them as idolatrous. Uh.

521
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: And so that the Spanish, it is said, destroyed a

522
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: lot of the key woos intentionally because you know, they're blasphemy. Uh.

523
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: Some were also probably destroyed by the Incas themselves during

524
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: their own civil war. Many others were simply lost to time, like,

525
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: these are not stone carvings. These are textiles, and they're

526
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: you know, they can be subject to the elements. And

527
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 1: so almost all of the key woos we have available

528
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: to archaeology today come from graves that we've opened up

529
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 1: or come from private collections that or museums, and they're

530
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 1: originally of unknown origin. We don't know where they come from,

531
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 1: so it can be difficult to figure out what the

532
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:01,840
Speaker 1: keep who was supposed to mean in its original context.

533
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:04,959
Speaker 1: We don't have the contacts, we don't have the uh,

534
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: we don't have the record keeper to to tell us

535
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: what the notations are referring to. Yeah, and so we're

536
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: back to that big question. Are these only numbers? Are

537
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 1: they only the raw data sheets for imperial accounting? Or

538
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,840
Speaker 1: do they contain words and calendars and genealogies and astronomy

539
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 1: and royal history and literature and even poems and songs?

540
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 1: Uh and so many. For many years, scholars all knew

541
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: that these systems of chords and knots were used for

542
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: some kind of notation, but they were not able to

543
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:37,960
Speaker 1: translate or decode them. And eventually, in the first half

544
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century that changed because a scholar named

545
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 1: Leland Locke demonstrated conclusively to the academic community that the

546
00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: chords carried numeracle messages in decimal form. However, Locke argued

547
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: that these knots were used for purely numerical purposes, and

548
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: so he was saying that, look, and we can show

549
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: how these things work to calculate numbers and to transmit numbers,

550
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 1: and that's all they do. Uh, And this remained the

551
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:10,200
Speaker 1: dominant thinking for a long time. Most scholars were convinced

552
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 1: by Locke's point of view that these didn't have they

553
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 1: didn't have stories in them, they didn't have words in

554
00:31:15,560 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: the literature. And then, of course in this we get

555
00:31:18,360 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: into the bias. We're just approaching this with it with

556
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: our own written language so firmly ingrained in our minds exactly. So,

557
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 1: to answer this question, I think we should start by

558
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: looking at how you read a keep you, and we

559
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: should just start with the numbers, because that's what everybody

560
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: agrees is there. How do you read the numbers on

561
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: a keep you? Well, we have we have a pretty

562
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 1: good understanding of the numerical notation system. And I want

563
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: to give a brief explanation that I got from a

564
00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 1: presentation given by a researcher named Gary Earton, and Eurton

565
00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 1: is that one of the foremost keep you researchers in

566
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: the world. His name comes up a lot if you're

567
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: reading about this subject. And Urton says that the keeping

568
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: was probably the principal instrument of management of the Inca Empire,

569
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: and it was used to manage numbers in the following way.

570
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: So picture you're keeping again, put it up in your mind.

571
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 1: You've got the big primary string hanging horizontally, and then

572
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: down from that or your pendant strings with knots on

573
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 1: them in different places. So the Inca is, as we've said,

574
00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: they had a decimal number system that's a base ten

575
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 1: counting system is just like ours. And the way the

576
00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:23,120
Speaker 1: strings work is the placement of the knot on the

577
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: string represents number places in the same way we represent

578
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 1: them by the order of writing. So think of the

579
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:33,520
Speaker 1: number five hundred and thirty seven. You see that number

580
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,360
Speaker 1: written down and you instantly know what it means because

581
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: the number the farthest to the right is the ones

582
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: place there are seven ones, and then the second most

583
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 1: to the right is the tens place, there are three tens,

584
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: and then the number of farthest from the right is

585
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: the hundreds place, and there are five hundreds, so it's

586
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 1: five dred and thirty seven. And there's a very similar

587
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:57,959
Speaker 1: placement system with the keepos, except it goes from the

588
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 1: bottom of the string to the top up, so not

589
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:03,400
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the string represents a value of

590
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: one the ones place, the next space of the string

591
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 1: represents a value of the tens place, and so on

592
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 1: like that, and then different types of knots represented different

593
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: values in those numeral places. So yeah, we can all

594
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 1: easily imagine that, I think, and certainly you can look

595
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 1: at some of the visual age as well, um knots

596
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 1: in the string representing numbers coming together to represent larger numbers. Yeah,

597
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 1: and there are some variations, but that's the gist of it,

598
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: and we can be confident that we're reading the strings

599
00:33:33,440 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: correctly because sometimes the strings are summed by other strings.

600
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: This is one of the things leland Lock showed, So

601
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 1: that there might be, for example, four pendant strings, and

602
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: then the primary string shows a number that happens to

603
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,960
Speaker 1: be the sum of all of the pendant strings put together.

604
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 1: So that would be very very unlikely to happen if

605
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: that were not if we were not reading the numbers correctly.

606
00:33:56,680 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 1: But even with the numerical notation, there's a question. Let's

607
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: say you're looking at a keep it. You gotta keep

608
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 1: it in your hands, and it might smell kind of

609
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:08,120
Speaker 1: moldy and this ancient thing, and you figure out by

610
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 1: adding up the knots on it, you you figure out

611
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:12,759
Speaker 1: how to read the not placement, and there's six D

612
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: and sixty seven of something? What is the something? Uh?

613
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 1: Is there more information to get out of a keep you,

614
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: even if it's just meant for numerical notation, as the

615
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:26,880
Speaker 1: traditional hypothesis holds. And so one hypothesis is that the

616
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 1: colors of the chords means something. So maybe a chord

617
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:35,320
Speaker 1: that's red colored means uh, some number of corn ears

618
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:37,800
Speaker 1: of corn, and then uh, the chord that's a different

619
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: color means some number of peanuts or something, because I mean.

620
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 1: The other idea would be that it would depend entirely

621
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 1: upon the context that was known by the holder of

622
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:49,920
Speaker 1: the keep it, And that is something that has been

623
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:52,880
Speaker 1: hypothesized as well. For example, some people might say that

624
00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:57,160
Speaker 1: the keep who would require specially trained people to keep

625
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: track of an orally transmit contextual in information about the keep. So,

626
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 1: for example, these chatskys the runners uh. The idea was

627
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: that the runners would deliver the keep bus for numerical data,

628
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:13,400
Speaker 1: but they would also orally relay messages contextualizing the numbers,

629
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: so that handoff to keep you to you it's six

630
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 1: sixty seven, and they say, this is the number of

631
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: times the emperor is going to kick you in the

632
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 1: face if you don't do what he says, or or

633
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 1: this is the number of ears of corn he'll give

634
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 1: you if something if you do what he wants. So

635
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: in this model, the keep who would not be say,

636
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,839
Speaker 1: a a more primitive substitute for written language. It would

637
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: be a notation system that does not in and of

638
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 1: itself tell the story or tell the complete data it

639
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: relies to upon the narration and or interpretation of another human. Yes, exactly,

640
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:51,319
Speaker 1: and this is something that also might have been done

641
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,800
Speaker 1: by these people called the keepu kama yuk, the not keepers,

642
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: who were talked about by the Spanish who specialized in

643
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 1: creating and reading the keeps. These were like the scribes

644
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:02,879
Speaker 1: who would be called out if you needed to keep

645
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:05,919
Speaker 1: you read in court to give testimony. The scribe would

646
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 1: come out and explain what the keep you said, So

647
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 1: the idea here could be that, well, maybe some of

648
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 1: the information isn't in the keep who, it's in the scribe,

649
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: and the scribe knows okay, this keep who means X,

650
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 1: Y and z. So there's the possibility that the idea

651
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:26,399
Speaker 1: is just sort of hard coded numerical data with oral metadata. Okay.

652
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,560
Speaker 1: But then back to your point though, that we do

653
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: see colors, we do see other differences that go beyond

654
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 1: the mere knots right, yes, exactly. And one other very

655
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: interesting fact, speaking to the BBC in two thousand three

656
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: that scholar I mentioned earlier, Gary Urton gave this figure

657
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting. About two thirds of the known

658
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 1: keep you at that time. That number might have changed

659
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: somewhat since then, but about two thirds of them back

660
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 1: then obviously consisted of numerical figures. They fit the standard

661
00:36:56,600 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 1: scholarly model. You can look at the numbers and just

662
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 1: count up numbers. But what about the other one third.

663
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:06,600
Speaker 1: There's this other group of keepus that we have available

664
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:12,160
Speaker 1: to archaeologists that don't obviously just transmit numerical information. So

665
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: what's going on with them? Are they saying something? And

666
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: that's the big question that scholars are still trying to

667
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 1: answer today. So one of the biggest steps towards discovering

668
00:37:23,160 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: the other information contained in the keypoo, if there is

669
00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:29,719
Speaker 1: such information, is the creation of a standardized computer database

670
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 1: of KEEPU descriptions, because it's very hard, you know, like

671
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 1: you don't know what information is relevant. So you're looking

672
00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:38,439
Speaker 1: at a bunch of textile woven stuff and you're like, well,

673
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: this one has kind of a fraight end. Is that

674
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 1: something that could that mean something? Or is that just

675
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:45,719
Speaker 1: how it is? And this one has an overhand not,

676
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 1: this one has an underhand not in the same place.

677
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: Is that meaningful? Is that coding some kind of something

678
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 1: that would means means something makes sense? Or is it

679
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 1: just an accident. So having a standardized database of descriptions

680
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: and looting basically all of the relevant information that you

681
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:07,480
Speaker 1: can state about these strings allows people to cross reference

682
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 1: them and look for patterns, and especially allows computer programs

683
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:13,760
Speaker 1: to look for patterns in the strings and knots, because

684
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 1: patterns are often the key to translation. For example, if

685
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: you see a very commonly repeated pattern in something, even

686
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:23,319
Speaker 1: if you have no idea what the pattern means, you

687
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,839
Speaker 1: might start by assuming it represents a common word like

688
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:28,880
Speaker 1: the name of an emperor or the name of a

689
00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: capital city or something like that. And so researchers have

690
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:35,240
Speaker 1: been doing this. Actually more than a decade ago. Harvard

691
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: University researchers Gary Earton and Carrie Braziine started doing computer

692
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 1: analysis of keep you and in two thousand five they

693
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:47,480
Speaker 1: published research suggesting that introductory chords on some of these

694
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,560
Speaker 1: keep who might serve as toponyms, which would be like

695
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: location tags that would be the name of a place

696
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: to show where keep you came from or what community

697
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 1: at concerned. And if this is correct, this means said, Okay,

698
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:04,479
Speaker 1: we definitely know there's some kind of notation in these

699
00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 1: strings other than mere numbers the name of a place,

700
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 1: and if there's a name of a place, there could

701
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: be other words. Right. That's interesting. Um. Yeah, And especially

702
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 1: again if you think back to the INCA is just

703
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: is having such an expertise and textiles like textiles are

704
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:26,960
Speaker 1: going to speak to their their masters, perhaps in a

705
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:29,400
Speaker 1: way that that they're just not going to speak to

706
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:33,240
Speaker 1: a modern observer, even a modern observer who has immersed

707
00:39:33,239 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 1: themselves in the topic. Uh. And I also have to

708
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 1: say that the idea of a modern computer essentially speaking

709
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: or attempting to speak and communicate with this older form

710
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: of notation, this older informational system is just really mind boggling.

711
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: I love I just loved to envision it. Yeah, it's

712
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,360
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. And there's another really interesting development. This

713
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 1: is actually reading this story. What made me want to

714
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: do this episode that there's a very recent discovery that

715
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 1: might help us crack the code. It might give us

716
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:12,719
Speaker 1: a foothold into looking for the Rosetta stone of the Keepo.

717
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:15,839
Speaker 1: So the discovery was that there's an archaeological site about

718
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: a hundred miles south of Lima, Peru, and it's called Incahuas.

719
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: And at the site, excavators found a collection of keepoos

720
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: in their original place of use. If you want to

721
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 1: look this up, there's a great New York Times article

722
00:40:28,680 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: on it called Untangling, an accounting tool and an ancient

723
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:36,760
Speaker 1: Incan mystery from January. So the keepoos in their original

724
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:41,840
Speaker 1: place of use, it was a storage facility for food crops.

725
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:46,719
Speaker 1: So they've got foods. They're like peppers, corn beans, peanuts,

726
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:50,760
Speaker 1: and remnants of many of these foods have been preserved

727
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 1: by the arid climate of the site, so we can

728
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: still tell what crops were where in the storehouse. And

729
00:40:56,640 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 1: this is significant because, as we said before, most keepoos

730
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: today they don't come from their original context. They were

731
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:05,240
Speaker 1: buried in a grave with somebody, or they came from

732
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 1: somebody's private collection, and we don't know where they originally

733
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 1: came from or what they might have meant. So here

734
00:41:10,560 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: we can see keepos along with the quantities they're supposed

735
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:17,280
Speaker 1: to be counting six hundred and sixty seven, some things

736
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:21,640
Speaker 1: become six hundred and sixty seven baskets of peanuts. And

737
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 1: using this contextual information, archaeologists can look for physical signifiers

738
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 1: in the keepos, like extranots are not orientation or string

739
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: color that might correlate with what's being counted, something to

740
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 1: say that this was not six hundred and sixty seven peanuts,

741
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: but six hundred sixty seven uh um, you know, bundles

742
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: of peanuts or something that there was there was some

743
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:47,920
Speaker 1: other detail that defines exactly what it's saying. And so

744
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:51,319
Speaker 1: if they can find such details that might correlate with

745
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 1: what's being counted, then, like I said, give us a

746
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: foot in the door to start understanding non numerical information

747
00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 1: hidden in the strings that we couldn't understand for. But

748
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:03,800
Speaker 1: I do want to also qualify at Gary Urton, that

749
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 1: same scholar he's quoted in the article, and he he

750
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:11,400
Speaker 1: says it's not quite the perfect Rosetta Stone yet. So

751
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:14,919
Speaker 1: if there are any linguistic narratives waiting in the undiscovered

752
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 1: deciphered keeps, we haven't found the perfect key to decoding

753
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 1: them yet. But that made me wonder what would be

754
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 1: the jackpot find what what is exactly what we'd like

755
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: to find to figure out if they're literary histories and

756
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: poems and stuff like that in the keepos. And I

757
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:33,879
Speaker 1: found a pretty good answer to this. In a two

758
00:42:33,920 --> 00:42:37,280
Speaker 1: thousand three newspiece for the Journal Science, Charles C. Man

759
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 1: Us offered that the best case scenario would be to

760
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: discover a Spanish colonial translation of a known keep, and

761
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,360
Speaker 1: then we really would have something like the Rosetta Stone.

762
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: So the Rosetta Stone helped us discover how to translate

763
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 1: hieroglyphics by having the same document in hieroglyphics and then

764
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:57,239
Speaker 1: in Greek right next to it. So what we need

765
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 1: is a contemporary translation where um where a Spaniard essentially

766
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: set down and said, hey, explain to me what this keep?

767
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 1: Who is saying, show me what this keep who is

768
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:10,239
Speaker 1: saying and in him recording yeah and so, and we

769
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: would also have to have access to what the keep

770
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:14,759
Speaker 1: Who was, either to actually have the keep who still

771
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:19,240
Speaker 1: or to have a complex description of what was on it. Okay,

772
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 1: so both of these things have to survive, have to

773
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 1: have existed and to have survived. But if we had

774
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:28,280
Speaker 1: such a thing, we could form the basis of Alexicon. Unfortunately,

775
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:32,360
Speaker 1: we don't think there's anything like that, unless I should

776
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: mention that I should mention this though it's a kind

777
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 1: of iffy road to go down. So there is one

778
00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:43,239
Speaker 1: set of colonial documents out there, or claimed colonial documents,

779
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 1: produced by the Neapolitan amateur historian Clara Michinelli in the

780
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:52,040
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, which claims to include an original historical account

781
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:54,400
Speaker 1: of the literary contents of keep Wo and so it

782
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 1: explains that some keep Whos contain a secret phonetic rendering

783
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:01,799
Speaker 1: of the Andean language Quechua, which you mentioned earlier. And

784
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: they say certain physical markers on the strings represent syllables

785
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,360
Speaker 1: of the language. So that would be actual phonetic language,

786
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: not just not like a symbol, not like a not

787
00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 1: means a word. But like a certain symbol on the

788
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:16,400
Speaker 1: rope means a sound that you make with your mouth.

789
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:20,000
Speaker 1: So what's the problem with this document? Well, if it

790
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: were true, would be a huge discovery. But um, but

791
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 1: this collection of documents has been regarded with what I

792
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:29,720
Speaker 1: would describe as serious skepticism by the scholars I was reading.

793
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any Indian scholars talking about it in

794
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:38,359
Speaker 1: recent publications. Almost everything that mentions it says, I don't know,

795
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:41,959
Speaker 1: this looks kind of iffy. Um. So it doesn't seem

796
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: to me like the academic community is persuaded that these

797
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: documents hold any value. They might be forgeries, or they

798
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:52,920
Speaker 1: might the documents might be really historical, but they might

799
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:55,799
Speaker 1: have been forged at the time they were created. But

800
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about that, you can

801
00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: google the Mitchinelli documents or the Naples documents and that

802
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:04,319
Speaker 1: will turn up some leads for you. So the mystery

803
00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:09,760
Speaker 1: of whatever literary content the keepos contain is still a mystery.

804
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:11,799
Speaker 1: We we don't have the answer yet. Who know, we

805
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: may never have the answer, or we may find out that,

806
00:45:14,719 --> 00:45:17,880
Speaker 1: you know what, it's all, it's all just numerical notation.

807
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: In fact, there is no literary content there. But I

808
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 1: hope that's not the case, because it really would be

809
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:26,880
Speaker 1: amazing to suddenly uncover the meaning of of all these

810
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: documents that contain the history we never got from the Spanish. Yeah,

811
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: and you know, you you want that culture to still

812
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 1: have a voice in our world despite um what was

813
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:40,720
Speaker 1: done to eradicated and that that also gets to another

814
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: um area here is that and one of the other

815
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:49,279
Speaker 1: just huge tragedies of of any of the American cultures,

816
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:53,399
Speaker 1: UM is that we will never know where they would

817
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: have gone, what would would they would have developed into

818
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 1: without this outside context event of the of the of

819
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:05,359
Speaker 1: the colonial invasion. Yeah, yeah, I mean, what would the

820
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 1: Incolan culture have looked like a few hundred years down

821
00:46:08,200 --> 00:46:11,480
Speaker 1: the road if not for the introduction of of smallpox

822
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 1: and the Christian mission and and the and the military

823
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 1: conquest of the Spanish. It's hard to say, but it

824
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 1: would have been fascinating to learn that because fortunately we

825
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 1: can look back to other physical notation systems in history

826
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:28,160
Speaker 1: and we can actually see how they developed and look

827
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,760
Speaker 1: at how they seem to have played into the development

828
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:35,120
Speaker 1: of written language and uh and and and in numbers

829
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: as well. Yes, exactly, so if you do think of

830
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:41,439
Speaker 1: of one possibility about the key boos being a sort

831
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 1: of proto writing system, like maybe it wasn't fully able

832
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: to communicate literary content yet, but it had some literary content,

833
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 1: like it had some words, but not the whole language

834
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: I presented. Uh. That has some parallels that we know

835
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: about from other times and places in history. Yeah, particular,

836
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 1: really if we go back to uh Neolithic Mesopotamia particularly,

837
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 1: we're going back to around uh uh seven thousand, five

838
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:11,279
Speaker 1: hundred BC, and this is where we saw the use

839
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: of clay tokens in accounting. So these were clay tokens

840
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:20,320
Speaker 1: and they were inscribed with recorded information about traded agricultural goods.

841
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:23,520
Speaker 1: We see the use of small geometric clay objects throughout

842
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 1: the Near East in this period, and it's all serving

843
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: as as ultimately as a precursor to writing in mathematics.

844
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:32,440
Speaker 1: So this is trying sort of like the traditional understanding

845
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:34,920
Speaker 1: of the numerical keypo it's trying to it's trying to

846
00:47:35,040 --> 00:47:38,240
Speaker 1: use a notation system without writing yet. And of course

847
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:42,320
Speaker 1: in both cases, agricultural is is tremendously important both to

848
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 1: the Inca and to the ancient Mesopotamians because remember it

849
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: wasn't just that we learned to cultivate crops and domestigate animals.

850
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 1: These technological advancements changed the shape in the scope of

851
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:55,799
Speaker 1: human life. It demanded new systems of thought, and the

852
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,399
Speaker 1: clay tokens were a part of this. Yeah. I would

853
00:47:58,440 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: say one thing that seems significant with the introduction of

854
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:04,799
Speaker 1: agriculture and domesticated animals is that you're not concerned with

855
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: what you're eating today, returned with all the things you

856
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: have available to eat in the future. Exactly. Yeah. So

857
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 1: with the with the earlier tokens, it's a pretty basic model.

858
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 1: The more primitive tokens, you have like a token with

859
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 1: a sheep on it, and that play picture of a sheep,

860
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 1: a little picture of a sheet, and that means, hey,

861
00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 1: this represents one sheep, and that is essentially a pictogram,

862
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:30,480
Speaker 1: all right, you have a symbol that represents the thing

863
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:32,600
Speaker 1: that it is. So like if you have a picture

864
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: of a dog, that is a pictogram representing a dog.

865
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 1: But then the tokens uh get more complicated to begin

866
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: to represent multiple items. Uh. So you might have a

867
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:45,759
Speaker 1: token that would have multiple sheep on it, and that

868
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:49,279
Speaker 1: would represent multiple sheep. The number of sheep represented there.

869
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: What if you just sort of like drew extra sheep

870
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 1: on your Well, we will get into some of that,

871
00:48:55,719 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 1: because that would be that would be wrong, that would

872
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 1: be counterfeiting, Joe um that. You know, as the city's developed,

873
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:04,759
Speaker 1: you get more and more complex tokens, tokens that they

874
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:07,279
Speaker 1: are not only representing more of one item, but are

875
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:11,280
Speaker 1: essentially breaking off from the idea of a mere pictograph

876
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 1: to the idea of an or pictogram to an ideogram,

877
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:18,000
Speaker 1: which is a symbol that represents an idea. Okay, so

878
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 1: there's a level of abstraction there, right. Like a classic

879
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:22,840
Speaker 1: example of this would be to go back to the

880
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: dog picture of a dog. It's a pictogram or a

881
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:28,120
Speaker 1: pictograph representing the dog, but a picture of a dog

882
00:49:28,160 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 1: with a circle and a slash through it, that of

883
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 1: course means no dogs. And that's the rather simple thing.

884
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:37,240
Speaker 1: But it's it's the next step in uh in in

885
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 1: in symbolic representation. Yeah, it makes sense. It introduces abstract negation. Yeah.

886
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:45,920
Speaker 1: So these were used for these clay tokens were used

887
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:49,279
Speaker 1: for trading and record keeping. They were strung on strings.

888
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:52,360
Speaker 1: In some cases, each end of the string attached to

889
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 1: a clay bullet that was that sealed the deal so

890
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:59,160
Speaker 1: that this would keep you from from tampering with it.

891
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 1: So you have like six sheep you put and that's

892
00:50:02,160 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: that's the number of sheep involved in this deal or whatever.

893
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:08,520
Speaker 1: Then you join the strings you see it, with clay,

894
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:11,480
Speaker 1: nobody can take any tokens off or put them on.

895
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:15,400
Speaker 1: You can't cheat by adding beads exactly. Um. Then they

896
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 1: also had another system where they stored the tokens and

897
00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: clay envelopes. Uh. But then of course one of the

898
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 1: idea the things here is you put the toke clay

899
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: tokens inside a clay structure. How do you know what's

900
00:50:26,600 --> 00:50:29,360
Speaker 1: in there? Well, you take but before you seal it

901
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:32,920
Speaker 1: all up, you take the tokens and use them to

902
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: to to mark the outside of the clay envelope so

903
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:39,520
Speaker 1: that people will know exactly what's in there. So but

904
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: then again you have a sealed record of something. You know.

905
00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: All of this discussion makes me think about a really

906
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:48,920
Speaker 1: interesting concept that I'd like to do a full episode

907
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:52,480
Speaker 1: on sometime, which is how physical writing systems affect the

908
00:50:52,520 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: way we think. Yeah, I know there are a few

909
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: studies along these lines, like one of the things I read. Uh,

910
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:01,799
Speaker 1: just poking around real quick. The subject is about how

911
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:06,120
Speaker 1: the direction of a writing system changes how we envision

912
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:09,880
Speaker 1: the passage of time. That's just one simple example, but

913
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:11,920
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are tons of examples. If you're if

914
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,640
Speaker 1: you're a literate person and you interact with reading and

915
00:51:14,680 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: writing on a frequent basis, I think that probably has

916
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: some effect on how you interact with the world, on

917
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:26,240
Speaker 1: how your mind perceives, especially abstract concepts. So the question

918
00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 1: I have is because almost everybody today who who is literate,

919
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: who uses reading and writing, uses graphical reading and writing

920
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: markings on a page. Now, you might have some differences

921
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:40,719
Speaker 1: in that, like maybe writing that goes from right to

922
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: left or from left to right. That's one thing you

923
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 1: could look at. But how would it change the way

924
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 1: your mind interacts with the world if your physical notation

925
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 1: system of reality is based in strings instead of in

926
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:58,440
Speaker 1: making marketings on a page. Indeed, yeah, we're touring clay tokens. Yeah,

927
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,160
Speaker 1: how does that? How does that change the way you

928
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:04,360
Speaker 1: you think about the world talk about the world. Um,

929
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: do you live in a world of He had just

930
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 1: trying to imagine the inca mindset where agriculture and textiles

931
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,399
Speaker 1: are such an important aspect of your world, and then

932
00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 1: then how are they they informing your view of reality itself? Yeah?

933
00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:23,320
Speaker 1: I would. I would love to see the sort of

934
00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: the differences in imaginations, say that are present between a

935
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 1: person who uses standard graphical writing systems and someone who

936
00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:35,759
Speaker 1: is maybe a novelist who works in strings with Would

937
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:38,279
Speaker 1: that change how the way a novel unfurls, the way

938
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: the story is told. Yeah, Like just thinking back to

939
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:45,279
Speaker 1: what we're talking about earlier, earlier about the wandering god

940
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:49,279
Speaker 1: of the of the incas uh verra coca um? Did

941
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 1: he you know, in sort of modern Western ideas of

942
00:52:53,440 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: a god, sometimes you hear, you know about like the

943
00:52:55,080 --> 00:52:56,840
Speaker 1: Book of God, right, and he has a book and

944
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:00,200
Speaker 1: he's writing people's names in it. So did did this

945
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: god of the Inca, the wandering god? Did he have

946
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: a keepu? And then what what did he consist of?

947
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:09,799
Speaker 1: What kind of information would be bound up in it's not? Oh?

948
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 1: No is? Yeah? Is your name written or not written?

949
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: Is your name tied in the keep who of life? Yeah? Um?

950
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 1: And you know another area where all this talk of

951
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: clay tokens and and keep us uh and and and

952
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,799
Speaker 1: written language another air with this. Uh, I can't help

953
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 1: but think about is our increasing use of emoticons, emojis

954
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 1: and also just memes and gifts to convey our emotional

955
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:40,880
Speaker 1: responses to uh two different scenarios and bits of information

956
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:43,319
Speaker 1: on the Internet. Yeah. Well, I mean one of the

957
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 1: things that's that's true about memes is that many of

958
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:48,360
Speaker 1: them are linguistic in nature, so that on text on

959
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 1: them plenty aren't plenty or just pictures you know. Reaction gifts. Yeah,

960
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:56,400
Speaker 1: it's huge on the Internet. Yeah, like the I mean,

961
00:53:56,440 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: it's kind of exploded into its own thing, but the

962
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 1: whole John travol of wandering into a room confused. There's

963
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:05,160
Speaker 1: no text there, but it conveys a little something more

964
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: than merely Hey, I don't understand more than just putting

965
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 1: a row of question marks in response to something. Right. Yes, Um,

966
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:17,120
Speaker 1: there's actually a brilliant uh short. I don't know if

967
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:20,799
Speaker 1: you've seen this yet, but it air on the Coldbart Show. Yeah,

968
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:23,360
Speaker 1: you sent it to me and it was. It's like

969
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: a little skit. And the idea is that Facebook is

970
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:30,640
Speaker 1: rolling out an additional feature as a as as a

971
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: follow up to their Reactions deal, where the reactions thing

972
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:36,319
Speaker 1: of course, is where they took the thumbs up and

973
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:39,360
Speaker 1: they augmented it so you can do like a heart

974
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 1: or an angry face and a few others. I'm laughing. Yeah,

975
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: so they were. This skit involved Facebook rolling out something

976
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: called Facebook Alpha, which is essentially them recreating the use

977
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:53,879
Speaker 1: of the alphabet saying hey, we have we have these

978
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:56,800
Speaker 1: all these. Each one of these stands for a different

979
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,560
Speaker 1: part of a word. Twenty six symbols that you can

980
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: now is to show your reactions to things. Yeah, I

981
00:55:02,719 --> 00:55:05,280
Speaker 1: loved out. They were like, you can in fact represent

982
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:10,920
Speaker 1: the entire works of shakespeareancing only these twenty six symbols. Yeah.

983
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 1: So I'll have to link to that on the landing

984
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:14,319
Speaker 1: page for this episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind

985
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:15,920
Speaker 1: dot com, because if you haven't seen it, it's a

986
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:19,960
Speaker 1: not only is it a wonderful stand up of emoji culture, uh,

987
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:23,240
Speaker 1: it also ties into some of the origins of written

988
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 1: language and some of the earlier notation systems that we're

989
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:29,319
Speaker 1: talking about here. Yeah, there's one more interesting fact I

990
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:31,959
Speaker 1: want to get to before we finish out, is that

991
00:55:32,239 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've got a chance to read

992
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:35,960
Speaker 1: about this, but there's some keep whos still in use

993
00:55:36,000 --> 00:55:39,960
Speaker 1: in modern times. Uh And so you would be thinking like, oh, well,

994
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 1: if there are people who know how to, you know,

995
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:44,400
Speaker 1: write in the language of keepoos today, why don't we

996
00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: just ask them to translate. That's not exactly how they're

997
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:51,760
Speaker 1: used today. Instead of being used for literature or record keeping,

998
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:54,960
Speaker 1: they're used for ritual power. Uh So. The example I

999
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 1: read about was a University College London project page about

1000
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:02,600
Speaker 1: how in the Peruvian and East there's this mountain community

1001
00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:06,239
Speaker 1: called San Cristobal de Rapas, and within this village, in

1002
00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: a protected ceremonial building known as a CA Hawaii, the

1003
00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: villagers have been keeping this gigantic keepu object for ritual

1004
00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:20,040
Speaker 1: and ceremonial use. And this one giant object is believed

1005
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:23,040
Speaker 1: to be collected from a large number of smaller keepu

1006
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:25,520
Speaker 1: over the years. Some parts of it are older than others,

1007
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 1: some might be more recent. But what really struck me

1008
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 1: is the way it was used. And I want to

1009
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: read a quote from this UCL project page where they

1010
00:56:34,719 --> 00:56:37,840
Speaker 1: say a number of rituals happen inside the CA Hawaii.

1011
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:42,239
Speaker 1: Their most important aspect is labuskada del tiempo, which could

1012
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 1: be translated the search for weather when the mountains are

1013
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:50,320
Speaker 1: invoked to bring rain. Participants bring offerings like oils, ray wains,

1014
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:56,239
Speaker 1: which is crop offerings, coca leaves, kunuk incense, tobacco, liqueurs, flowers,

1015
00:56:56,520 --> 00:56:59,800
Speaker 1: guinea pigs, et cetera. And the main ritual is the

1016
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:03,880
Speaker 1: awe in Trego, which happens on the second night of January.

1017
00:57:04,239 --> 00:57:06,920
Speaker 1: At this time, the members of the committee that oversees

1018
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:11,040
Speaker 1: the use of the pastures around Rapause are rotated the keep.

1019
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 1: You are not handled, they're only invoked. Their presence is

1020
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:19,360
Speaker 1: considered beneficial to the rituals themselves and to the success

1021
00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: of the political changeover. So this makes me think about

1022
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:26,960
Speaker 1: in what ways the functional technologies of one era become

1023
00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:29,920
Speaker 1: the holy relics of the next, Like which of our

1024
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 1: functional technologies could become an item of religious significance in

1025
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:36,480
Speaker 1: the future. That this would be sort of like if

1026
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:41,640
Speaker 1: if our Excel spreadsheets became holy objects in the pature,

1027
00:57:42,440 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 1: or or if you take the the the hypothesis that

1028
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 1: there's more literary information in the keepers, even if our

1029
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:52,160
Speaker 1: you know, books or something, even if we couldn't read them,

1030
00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:55,800
Speaker 1: we just had books put up somewhere as holy objects.

1031
00:57:55,840 --> 00:57:58,440
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean this gets right into the subject

1032
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:02,240
Speaker 1: of grimoires that that covered with a Christian about a

1033
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:07,040
Speaker 1: year back, where the book becomes uh more important as

1034
00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: a symbolic representation of the data within it and the

1035
00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:13,720
Speaker 1: power within it and the meaning with it and as

1036
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: opposed to just a mirror, uh you know, physical record

1037
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 1: of the thing. Yeah. Once again we're seeing this fascinating

1038
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:25,240
Speaker 1: line that runs right through between the sort of mundane

1039
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 1: usage of technology to the holy power of religion and

1040
00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:32,880
Speaker 1: all of the symbolic territory in between. I love these

1041
00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:35,640
Speaker 1: types of subjects, uh. And I loved getting to talk

1042
00:58:35,680 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: about the INCA today. Yeah. This has been really cool. Yeah,

1043
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:42,440
Speaker 1: I mean really Hopefully, among other things, this will give

1044
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: you a little more respect for for the fabulous culture

1045
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 1: and the sort of a Amalcolm of cultures that came before. Yeah. Absolutely.

1046
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:53,080
Speaker 1: And if you're one of the people out there who's

1047
00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:56,120
Speaker 1: working on this research to try to decode the keypoos

1048
00:58:56,200 --> 00:58:59,640
Speaker 1: and find out if there's literary information in there and

1049
00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:02,280
Speaker 1: if so, what it is, uh, we we wish you

1050
00:59:02,320 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 1: all the best and we can't wait to learn more. Yeah. Hey,

1051
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:06,640
Speaker 1: in then in the time being, if you want to

1052
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:09,000
Speaker 1: check out more content from stuff to blow your mind,

1053
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:11,520
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1054
00:59:11,600 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: That is the mothership. That's where you'll find blog post,

1055
00:59:14,480 --> 00:59:17,960
Speaker 1: podcast videos, links out to our various social media accounts.

1056
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:20,280
Speaker 1: We are blow the Mind on Facebook and Twitter. We

1057
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: are stuff to Blow your Mind on Tumbler and Hey.

1058
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:26,520
Speaker 1: And if you want to physically send us uh some

1059
00:59:26,560 --> 00:59:32,200
Speaker 1: sort of keep who Inspired Creation to convey your appreciation

1060
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:35,439
Speaker 1: for the podcast, you can find the physical address over

1061
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 1: at halft works dot com. And of course, as always,

1062
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:40,320
Speaker 1: if you'd like to email us with your thoughts or

1063
00:59:40,360 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 1: feedback about this episode or any others, you can get

1064
00:59:43,040 --> 00:59:45,080
Speaker 1: in touch with us that Blow the Mind at how

1065
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and pass

1066
00:59:56,840 --> 01:00:14,920
Speaker 1: into the topics stuff works dot com at the foot

1067
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Speaker 1: spart