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?
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Saturday May 27 2017, @10:07AM (3 children)
You are making stuff up again! *citation(s) needed*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laws_concerning_immigration_and_naturalization_in_the_United_States
You can read, Runaway? First Immigration law, 1882. You may be confusing immigration laws with Naturalization laws, a different matter, and one you also have your caput in rectum about. So can we get back to the Inca knot records?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:04PM (2 children)
The United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. Article I, section 8, clause 4 of the Constitution expressly gives the United States Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.[1]
Pursuant to this power, Congress in 1790 passed the first naturalization law for the United States, the Naturalization Act of 1790. The law enabled those who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year to apply for citizenship. However it restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good moral character".
The Naturalization Act of 1795 increased the residency requirement to five years residence and added a requirement to give a three years notice of intention to apply for citizenship, and the Naturalization Act of 1798 further increased the residency requirement to 14 years and required five years notice of intent to apply for citizenship.
_________________
Aristarchus, you poor boob, you should have translated that to Greek before you jumped on it. The first paragraph of your own link puts the lie to your statement. Yeah, "naturalization" - you can't be a citizen unless you're naturalized, right? Despite the last part of the last sentence. Oh, wait, you thought that wikipedia is an authoritative source? Don't we all know better than that?
Want some more interesting stuff on immigration?
http://www.shmoop.com/early-american-immigration/benjamin-franklin.html [shmoop.com]
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/multiamerican/2010/09/02/7846/quote-of-the-moment-circa-1751-a-founding-father-o/ [scpr.org]
First, it was the Germans, then it was the Greeks, then the Poles, now it's EVERYONE!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:22PM (1 child)
Notice that I am not the one who cannot spell "too"!
Runaway, do try and keep up. Naturalization is becoming a citizen. But that is not what you said, you said America has never allow free immigration, and my response is that this, as per usual, if just plain false. Wrong. Not a fact. People could freely immigrate to the United states from it's founding unit the 1882 act. There were several laws concerning naturalization, but these did not prevent free immigration. And after 1882, almost all legislation restricting immigration were quite explicitly racist. The quota system for Eastern Europeans, like Polacks, was extremely so. And gradually they have all been determined to be unconstitutional. And the latest reform on these matters has been held up by the Republicans and useful yokels like yourself for over a decade.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:52PM
"explicitly racist"