Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the succeeded-by-Madame-Thérèse-Defarge dept.

Animal-hair cords dating to the late 1700s contain a writing system that might generate insights into how the Inca communicated, a new study suggests.

Researchers have long wondered whether some twisted and knotted cords from the Inca Empire, which ran from 1400 to 1532, represent a kind of writing about events and people. Many scholars suspect that these textile artifacts, known as khipus, mainly recorded decimal numbers in an accounting system. Yet Spanish colonial documents say that some Inca khipus contained messages that runners carried to various destinations. 

Now a new twist in this knotty mystery comes from two late 18th century khipus stored in a wooden box at San Juan de Collata, a Peruvian village located high in the Andes Mountains. A total of 95 cord combinations of different colors, animal fibers and ply directions, identified among hundreds of hanging cords on these khipus, signify specific syllables, reports Sabine Hyland. Hyland, a social anthropologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, describes the khipus online April 19 in Current Anthropology.

Her findings support a story told by Collata villagers that the khipus are sacred writings of two local chiefs concerning a late 18th century rebellion against Spanish authorities.

The Collata khipus display intriguing similarities to Inca khipus, including hanging cords with nearly the same proportions of two basic ply directions, Hyland says. A better understanding of Central Andean khipus from the 1700s through the 1900s will permit a reevaluation of the earlier Inca twisted cords, she suggests.

Messages hidden in plain sight? Or should that be "plaid" site?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:55AM (3 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:55AM (#516338) Journal
    "And, we, today, claim that we can't build a wall across our southern border - to hard, to expensive, to something or other."

    I don't think anyone is arguing it's actually impossible. It's just an awful lot of capital to waste on a project that will cause more harm than good. China's Great Wall was ever very effective as border control, and it certainly was not solid militarily, it's been overrun many times, and in fact historically it was valuable primarily for the fact that it was a functioning *road* - essentially a fortified road for its length, which made it much safer for both military and civilian merchants to pass to and from the west. Of course today its only value is cultural, as a source of pride and magnet for tourism.

    I haven't heard anyone talking about a border wall proposing it take the form of a raised roadway, and I don't expect anything of cultural value is in the cards either. We can be sure it would help little if any with border control among other reasons because the border is already effectively walled for the most part - in some places electronically, in some physically. The 'low-hanging fruit' of this approach has already been taken, the places where a physical wall makes sense already have them, there isn't much to be gained by building a physical wall across miles of open desert that are already electronically monitored and where the natural hazards are more deterrence than anything the authorities can threaten anyway.

    Other than disrupting the migration of wildlife and wasting even more taxpayer funds, what's the point?
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:07PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:07PM (#516411) Journal

    Well - then you could see it from space. Or, your great-grandchildren will be able to see it. ;^)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:11PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:11PM (#516413)

    > haven't heard anyone talking about a border wall proposing it take the form of a raised roadway,

    Then you missed this recent story -- https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/04/16/1832223 [soylentnews.org] "Creative Proposals for "the Trump Wall" -- Hyperloop Along the Border and Others"

    Main link in the SN article http://www.businessinsider.com/design-trumps-border-wall-hyperloop-2017-4 [businessinsider.com]

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:50PM

      by Arik (4543) on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:50PM (#516455) Journal
      "Hyperloop Along the Border and Others"

      Lol. Sure. Power it with cold fusion and waste eggshells while you're at it.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?