Were Quipus used to send messages?

[ron davis]

Power in the Inca Empire was so centralized that the last ruler, Atahualpa, continued to administer with absolute authority even while in prolonged Spanish captivity.
My question is how the Inca had been able to exercise this asolute authority over vast distances of thousands of miles without a system of writing. The famous Chaski runners, who reportedly carried royal messages verbally, only ran a few miles each. Between Cuzco and the southern extreme on the empire would have required breathless Chaskis retelling the message hundreds of times. ( As a parlor game we call this Chinese Whispers)
No doubt the knotted strings called quipus were essential for keeping records of people and objects,etc, but how could these have been used to send messages containing important instructions, as some contend?
They would have to had encoded proper nouns, conditional statements, etc,---in essence a written language.
How much, and what type of information, could really have been conveyed by these knotted strings?
This may be a question more appropriate for a computer information expert than an archaeologist.

[Minimalist]

As I recall from "The Bible Unearthed," Ron, Professor Finkelstein makes the case that writing ( which begins with a need for record-keeping ) is a marker in the development of a true state.

To grossly oversimplify, once someone's domain reaches the point where he can't see it in the course of an afternoon's ride a means must be devised for him to keep track of his property. Finkelstein's area of expertise is the ANE where political entities were tiny in comparison to the Americas so, yes, surely the Inca would have had some system of writing or at least notation.

In the Ancient Near East we have examples of cuneiform being carved in clay tablets which when baked become more or less permanent. In addition we had them writing on ostraka, again fired clay which does not degrade. Writing on parchment or papyrus can survive to a degree depending on conditions but humidity is the enemy of organic writing media. The trick is, what media did the Inca use and was it biodegradable or not? I don't know enough about the quipu to even speculate although it seems like a fairly cumbersome means of telling someone how many pounds of potatoes they have in a warehouse.

In any case literacy was not widespread and did not need to be. One scribe writes to another who reads it and writes back whatever is dictated to him. One scribe in the king's household and one with each of his commanders or administrators would pretty much do it.

I will admit that the image of one breathless runner staggering in to deliver a verbal message to another and expecting it to be unchanged is amusing. Frankly, it has all the earmarks of a tale told to impress the Spanish.

[kbs2244]

I have to agree.

Writing transfers not only facts (taxes collected) but thoughts and ideas.
And it does it across both space and time.

If it was done by knotted strings or some other means, there had to be a way to communicate thought and feelings “between the lines” of the bare numerical communications.

[Digit]

The strings did not have to carry messages as such, they could have simply been used as an aid to memory so that the carrier did not miss out any of the message.
I suspect that would be step one, step two would be to incorporate steadily more and more info till the actual message could then be read.

Roy.

[War Arrow]

The strings did not have to carry messages as such, they could have simply been used as an aid to memory so that the carrier did not miss out any of the message.
I suspect that would be step one, step two would be to incorporate steadily more and more info till the actual message could then be read.

Roy.

Sorry... bit late but never mind.

Personally I suspect the quipu may have worked roughly as well as the central Mexican painted books which could record, names, dates, places, and some of the relationship between these (as in, so-and-so conquered somewhere on such and such day) but few abstracts - reason, motive, opinion. This left the narrator to fill in the details. I imagine the quipu as being a more basic variation on this, although I could be wrong.

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi Ron -

I think this is what you are looking for:
http://www.archaeology.org/9611/abstracts/inka.html

I don't know if the attempt yielded; perhaps more quippu will be recovered from excavations, leading to breaking the system.

[E.P. Grondine]

Sorry... bit late but never mind.

Personally I suspect the quipu may have worked roughly as well as the central Mexican painted books which could record, names, dates, places, and some of the relationship between these (as in, so-and-so conquered somewhere on such and such day) but few abstracts - reason, motive, opinion. This left the narrator to fill in the details. I imagine the quipu as being a more basic variation on this, although I could be wrong.

Hi War Arrow -

The Maya hieroglyphic vases preserve some fragments of those other books with "abstract ideas", those which were burned during the conquest. As it is, what you describe are stela contents, public memorials; the surviving meso-american books in hieroglyph, pictograph, and translation to European characters provide far more information than quipu could ever hold.

My guess is those working on the quipu are using standard modern breaking techniques, including analysis of function.

[War Arrow]

Sorry... bit late but never mind.

Personally I suspect the quipu may have worked roughly as well as the central Mexican painted books which could record, names, dates, places, and some of the relationship between these (as in, so-and-so conquered somewhere on such and such day) but few abstracts - reason, motive, opinion. This left the narrator to fill in the details. I imagine the quipu as being a more basic variation on this, although I could be wrong.

Hi War Arrow -

The Maya hieroglyphic vases preserve some fragments of those other books with "abstract ideas", those which were burned during the conquest. As it is, what you describe are stela contents, public memorials; the surviving meso-american books in hieroglyph, pictograph, and translation to European characters provide far more information than quipu could ever hold.

My guess is those working on the quipu are using standard modern breaking techniques, including analysis of function.

Yes. I was referring specifically to central-Mexican texts/imagery in the Mixteca-Puebla style rather than anything of the Maya whose pictographs I understand to carry a much more detailed information content. Recall that Mixteca-Puebla style, whilst having a visually descriptive dimension, is to an extent reliant upon the interpreter being familiar with the form (thinking here of Zouche-Nuttall and the like, much of which is lost to us beyond a few vague concepts in some cases). I'm just thinking aloud and speculating on, for example, certain types of knots could have stood for certain categories (crops, people, location, whatever), and with a knowledge of just a few such knots, the quipu dude would have a visual aid for a degree of information some way above that which is obvious to us (not that any of it is obvious to us of course), perhaps comparable at least to Codex Zouche-Nuttall and the like. Just an idea really.

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi War Arrow -

I think you'll really enjoy this link:
http://www.famsi.org/research/pohl/index.html

And particularly the readings of the Mixtec codices.

On quipu, we know quipu were used for "scratch paper", short term records of information.
Whether and/or how they were used for more complex information are open questions.

[War Arrow]

Hi War Arrow -

I think you'll really enjoy this link:
http://www.famsi.org/research/pohl/index.html

And particularly the readings of the Mixtec codices.

Yes, there's some good stuff there for sure... and ironically some of the commentaries go into a bit more detail than those in the various printed editions... not that it makes a lot of difference right now as all my print copies are about 5,000 miles away... mutter mumble....

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi War Arrow -

Your only problems are the cost of color printer ink, a three hole punch, and binders and hauling them around.

All the work at FAMSI is the best around, well directed, and easily available to the public.

Linda Schele first established the "collaborative" technique for breaking ancient Mayan, and that technique was adopted for internet technologies, and extended to other mesoamerican communication systems and peoples.

Nothing like the FAMSI system exists for studies of Ugarit, Ebla, or Linear A, Linear B, and "Hittite" Hieroglyphic, or Etruscan.

In those fields the traditional techniques and paper means, and publish or perish, are used.

We used to have a central clearing house for work on impacts, and the field progressed rapidly, but the editor took that resource and used it for global warming scepticism.

For the eastern first peoples of North America, there's nothing, and no one central place.

Be safe

[War Arrow]

Er yes... look, the thing is I am actually quite familiar with FAMSI and whilst they certainly provide a useful service, they're not without problems. Was wracking my brain to recall what it was that bothered me, and found the answer at last in an email correspondence from 2007, in which I wrote:

I've found a few problems in the online translation of Codex Rios. Firstly the image for folio 28v is found under the link to that for 29v, and vice versa. Secondly what I can make out of the original Spanish text doesn't quite square with the translation (or remarks made about this page of Rios in my copy of Codex Telleriano Remensis). At the very least I can see the Spanish text refers to prognostications for the day 7-Eagle (not mentioned in the translation). Elois Quinones Keber's comments for Tellariano-Remensis seem to suggest that Rios has the day 5-Reed as a day when farmers are born, and 7-Eagle is the heart disease/lunar day-sign.

They got back to me and said they'd get right on it.

I've just checked and the offending pages of Rios have been removed entirely, so misleading links seem not to be an issue. Not sure if they've set the other stuff right. The stuff I needed actually turned out to be in Mendieta and Histoyre du Mechique (or however the hell you spell it) which I found in the British Library, not that that necessarily has any bearing on anything.

Sorry for the derail, but if nothing else I suppose it may serve as a reminder to check one's sources, which I'm sure hurts no-one.

[E.P. Grondine]

From what you've described, it looks to me like the collaborative system worked.

Good advice on double checking sources.
With my stroke damage even after multiple checks I still screw up.

[War Arrow]

From what you've described, it looks to me like the collaborative system worked.

Good advice on double checking sources.
With my stroke damage even after multiple checks I still screw up.

Not sure whether it's likely to ring bells but I once ended up with more egg on my face than I liked through assuming Ross Hassig (Time, History & Belief in Ancient Mexico) wasn't just making it up as he went along. I think this was the first time I found myself in the weird position of identifying utter cobblers from a source I had initially imagined reliable (and notes compared elsewhere confirmed this) despite my being just some bloke. Since then I've become cautious. I guess we've all been there.

Er... sorry to hear about the stroke damage and all.