Cracking the Khipu Code

摘要

In the late 16th century, Spanish travelers in central Peru ran into an old Indian man, probably a former official of the Incan empire, which Francisco Pizarro had conquered in 1532. The Spaniards saw the Indian try to hide something he was carrying, according to the account of one traveler, Diego Avalos y Figueroa, so they searched him and found several bunches of the cryptic knotted strings known as khipu. Many khipu simply recorded columns of numbers for accounting or census purposes, but the conquistadors believed that some contained historical narratives, religious myths, even poems. In this case, the Indian claimed that his khipu recorded everything the conquerors had done in the area, "both the good and evil." The leader of the Spanish party, Avalos y Figueroa reported, immediately "took and burned these accounts and punished the Indian" for having them.