PERUVIAN AND NORTH AMERICAN KNOT RECORDS[1]
ANCIENT QUIPU
62. "The use of knots in cords for the purpose of reckoning, and recording numbers" was practiced by the Chinese and some other ancient people; it had a most remarkable development among the Inca of Peru, in South America, who inhabited a territory as large as the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, and were a people of superior mentality. The period of Inca supremacy extended from about the eleventh century a.d. to the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. The quipu was a twisted woolen cord, upon which other smaller cords of different colors were tied. The color, length, and number of knots on them and the distance of one from another all had their significance. Specimens of these ancient quipu have been dug from graves.
63. We reproduce from a work by L. Leland Locke a photograph of one of the most highly developed quipu, along with a line diagram of the two right-hand groups of strands. In each group the top strand usually gives the sum of the numbers on the four pendent strands. Thus in the last group, the four hanging strands indicate the numbers 89, 258, 273, 38, respectively. Their sum is 658; it is recorded by the top string. The repetition of units is usually expressed by a long knot formed by tying the overhand knot and passing the cord through the loop of the knot as many times as there are units to be denoted. The numbers were expressed on the decimal plan, but the quipu were not adopted for calculation; pebbles and grains of maize were used in computing.
64. Nordenskiold shows that, in Peru, 7 was a magic number; for in some quipu, the sums of numbers on cords of the same color, or the numbers emerging from certain other combinations, are multiples of 7 or yield groups of figures, such as 2777, 777, etc. The quipu disclose also astronomical knowledge of the Peruvian Indians.[2]
65. Dr. Leslie Spier, of the University of Washington, sends me the following facts relating to Indians in North America: "The data that I have on the quipu-like string records of North-American Indians indicate that there are two types. One is a long cord with knots and
- ↑ The data on Peru knot records given here are drawn from a most interesting work, The Ancient Quipu or Peruvian Knot Record, by L. Leland Locke (American Museum of Natural History, 1923). Our photographs are from the frontispiece and from the diagram facing p. 16. See Figs. 16 and 17.
- ↑ Erland Nordenskiold, Comparative Ethnographical Studies, No. 6, Part 1 (1925), p. 36.
