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Quipu in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio.. Quipu (/ ˈ k iː p uː / KEE-poo), also spelled khipu, are recording devices fashioned from knotted cords.They were historically used by various cultures in the central Andes of South America, most prominently by the Inca Empire.
Quipukamayuq with his quipu and a yupana, the main instruments used by the Incas in mathematics. The mathematics of the Incas (or of the Tawantinsuyu) was the set of numerical and geometric knowledge and instruments developed and used in the nation of the Incas before the arrival of the Spaniards. It can be mainly characterized by its ...
Unlike other civilizations that developed writing systems, the Andeans never had one, but they created the quipu, an intricate record-keeping technique that used knots and strings to store data.
Originally it was thought that Quipu were used only as mnemonic devices or to record numerical data. Quipus are also believed to record history and literature. [139] The Inca made many discoveries in medicine. [140] They performed successful skull surgery, by cutting holes in the skull to alleviate fluid buildup and inflammation caused by head ...
The chasquis were used to carry the king's orders in short time to the provinces or to the army commanders and bring news and notices important for the kingdom, the war and the provinces to Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
The quipu controlled every economic part of the large empire. Those in charge of keeping the documentation via the quipu were called quipucamayocs. [29] There are 1,500 strings on the largest quipu. The Sacred City of Caral-Supe has the oldest quipu, which dates from about 2500 BC. [30]
Quipu (or khipu), string-based recording devices, have been found at Caral, suggesting a writing, or proto-writing, system at Caral–Supe. [39] (The discovery was reported by Mann in Science in 2005, but has not been formally published or described by Shady.) The exact use of quipu in this and later Andean cultures has been widely debated.
Instead, their societies used the quipu, a system of knotted and colored strings, to convey information. Few quipus survive and they have never been fully deciphered. Scholars differ on whether the knotted cords of the quipu were able only to record numerical data or could also be used for narrative communication, a true system of writing.