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Most of the existing khipu are from the Inka period, approx 1400
– 1532 CE. The Inka empire stretched from Ecuador through central
Chile, with its heart in Cuzco, a city in the high Andes of southern Peru.
Colonial documents indicate that khipu were used for record keeping and
sending messages by runner throughout the empire. There are approximately
600 khipu surviving in museums and private collections around the world.
Photo courtesy of Peabody Museum, Harvard University.
The word khipu comes from the Quechua word for “knot" and
denotes both singular and plural. Khipu are textile artifacts composed
of cords of cotton or occasionally camelid fiber. The cords are arranged
such that there is one main cord, called a primary cord, from which many
pendant cords hang. There may be additional cords attached to a pendant
cord; these are termed subsidiaries. Some khipu have up to 10 or 12 levels
of subsidiaries. Khipu are often displayed with the primary cord stretched
horizontally, so that the pendants appear to form a curtain of parallel
cords, or with the primary cord in a curve, so that the pendants radiate
out from their points of attachment. When khipu were in use, they were
transported and stored with the primary cord rolled into a spiral. In
this configuration khipu have been compared to string mops.
Each khipu cord may have one or many knots. Leland Locke (see references)
was the first to show that the knots had numerical significance. The Inkas
used a decimal system of counting. Numbers of varying magnitude could
be indicated by knot type and the position of the knot on its cord. Beginning
in the 1970’s, Marcia and Robert Ascher conducted invaluable research
into the numeric significance of khipu, and developed a system of recording
khipu details which is still in wide use today among khipu researchers.
More recently, researchers such as Gary Urton have recognized the depth
of information contained in non-numeric, structural elements of khipu.
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