From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Jun 24 2003 - 18:48:03 MDT
Jay Jetted;
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Inca may have used knot computer code to bind empire
> By Steve Connor, Science Editor
> 23 June 2003
<snip>
> They ran the biggest empire of their age, with a vast network of
> roads, granaries, warehouses and a complex system of government. Yet
> the Inca, founded in about AD1200 by Manco Capac, were unique for
> such a significant civilisation: they had no written language. This
> has been the conventional view of the Inca, whose dominions at their
> height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to
> Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532.
>
> But a leading scholar of South American antiquity believes the Inca
> did have a form of non-verbal communication written in an encoded
> language similar to the binary code of today's computers. Gary Urton,
> professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the
> complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called
> khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of
> conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information.
<snippety snip>
Barbara Bemoans;
Not again, arrgh! Every few years someone comes along and claims to have
"deciphered" the Inca Quipu (usual spelling: don't know where the
Independent got "Khipu" from!).
Always making the same claim: that it's a complex code that substitutes
for a written language. Always the "decipherer" is a *traditional*
academic of some form or another; this time it's a Harvard Professor,
last time it was a senior archaeology student; and the list goes back
and on as far as the hind can sight.
Why? Particularly when the quipu system is still in use in the Andean
mountains and in the 19thC european scholars had the system explained to
them by Inca descendents. In essence it's a book keeping system.
Different colours represent different items (Llamas, potatoes, etc) and
the different knots represent units, 10, 100, and so on (I forget if the
Inca used base 5, 10, or 20, but for the purposes of illustration I'm
using base 10 as it's more familiar to us).
This was the fashion of the Quipu;
If, for example, + x O and @ represent different types of knot
and ---- represents the central string
and if;
+ = 1
x = 10
0 = 100
@ = 1000
then 2,403 might be strung as;
---+++---0000---@@---
or 1,044, might be strung as;
---++++---xxxx---@---
(note the absence of a need for zero in this notation system)
In the Quipu the stringings recorded individual quantities and the
furthermost strings the totals so
____________________________________________
| | | | | | | |
LLamas 5 16 4 22 106 37 total 190
Using Quipu the local temples would keep records of which farmers had
what stock and produce, the central temples would demand taxes on the
basis of these records, and the temples would record what was being sent
and received. The main temples recorded on huge quipu the taxes
collected, and would add complexity to denote which region, which record
keeper, which official dealt with this case, which reginal year of which
king, and if the number was actual, estimated, or wanted (this required
a few non-numeric knots of mnemonic value but it was a case of priests
and kings having "personal" knots: as which knot was whose was passed on
verbally this particular information is lost to us). Andean farmers
today have personal knots to identify quipus as theirs, and use the
innovation of the modern calendar to record the year: EG 2002 = 2
thousand and 2 = ---++---@@---.
No Y2K bugs in this system!
The Mesopotamian cultures used a similar accounting system (of different
shaped clay objects, backed in a hollow "egg" with pictorial
representations of the contents scraped into the exterior clay) for
nearly 4,000 years before they developed a full written language.
Both cases show one *can* run an empire, and have a civilization,
without a written language but not without taxation or accountants who
need a numeric notation system.
So, again, if the quipus are "understood" as much as they can be, do
"classically trained" scholars and archaeologists persist in claiming
year after year that the quipus were much more, and were a full written
language?
Well, that's simple. In standard traditional academic thinking a people
or culture can NOT be *civilised* unless they have writing. In
traditional academic thought writing is the primary indicator of
civilization. Moreover, writing being the herald of "History", most
traditional academic works will solemnly inform you that civilization
itself begins with writing.
The Inca people present a *big* problem to this view, for here was a
people, a culture, observed and recorded by "civilized" europeans, who
could pass every single "test" of civilization except one: they'd no
writing system. Yet they were undeniably civilized by every other
traditional test thereof.
There's evidence, in spite of the barrier of the Andes, that the Inca
were aware of writing in the east by the Aztec and Maya peoples, yet
they did not adopt these systems.
The traditional view sees this as evidence for their case. The Inca
didn't adopt eastern writing systems therefore they *must* have had no
need for it because they'd an adequate writing system of their own,
which in turn must be hidden in the "undeciphered" quipu.
The idea that the Inca may have rejected writing (as did the Celts) for
social, cultural, religious, and/or political reasons, or that they
simply saw no need for it as the existing system worked fine without it,
is not considered.
So rather than re-order their world view, or even accept that the Inca
cast doubt upon the view that writing indivisibly equals civilization,
the hunt by traditional academics goes on to find a "writing system"
within the knots of the quipus. Like Buffy "into every generation one is
born", and like every "one" before them they will fail, because what
they seek does not exist, and has no need to exist, for its "necessity"
exists to justify a definition rather than an actuality.
Can Archaeologists really be so blind? Well they can. A good example is
the view once held was that a culture could not develop monumental
architecture until after they'd invented pottery. In consequence, the
stone pyramids of the Chavin area were said, because the Chavin had no
pottery, to have been build by a later people who mysteriously came,
built their pyramid temples, and left - taking all their pots with them.
However, scientific dating methods proved that the pyramids were
contemporary to the Chavin people and the view that pottery precedes
monumental architecture was wrong. Indeed the pyramids in question are
contemporary to Egyptian pyramids! (see Richard L Burger's "Chavin and
the Origins of Andean Civilization").
The very Fortean aspect the orthodox view that Writing = Civilization is
that it spawned the belief that "civilization" began suddenly, almost
catastrophically fast, with the advent of writing.
This in turn, with 95 per cent of humanity's time on earth being
pre-literate, begs the not unreasonable question "If civilization began
suddenly then where did it come from?". And thus in turn are spawned the
"alternative" answers of Ignatious Donnelley (atlantis), Desmond Leslie
(spacemen), and Piazzi Smith (divine intervention); and the better known
moderernisers of these views; Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Erich Von
Daniken, Alan Alford, Peter Lemesurier, uncle Tom Cobblers an' all.
It is a great irony that the platform, without which all these
alternative explanations fail, or are even justifiable, is orthodox
archaeological dogma, yet it is archaeological orthodoxy that all these
alternatives claim must be swept aside in the light of their
"discoveries", yet to do so would destroy the very foundations without
which their own theories are unnecessary and unjustifiable!
For a fuller exploration of the falsity of the view that civilization
begins with writing see Richard Rudgley's excellent "Lost Civilizations
of the Stone Age" and for an account of pre-literate numeric systems,
their great antiquity, and pre-dating of writing systems, see Georges
Ifrah's "The Universal History of Numbers".
Barbara
-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
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