Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday January 19 2018, @07:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the knotty-problem dept.

He made graphs and compared the knots on the khipu to an old Spanish census document from the region when something clicked.

"Something looked out of the ordinary in that moment," Medrano said. "It seemed there was a coincidence that was too strong to be random."

He realized that, like a kind of textile abacus, the number of unique colors on the strings nearly matched with the number of first names on the Spanish census.

Source: Harvard student helps crack mystery of Inca code


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This discussion has been archived.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 wonkey_monkey on Friday January 19 2018, @08:17PM (7 children)

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday January 19 2018, @08:17PM (#624875) Homepage

    He realized that, like a kind of textile abacus, the number of unique colors on the strings nearly matched with the number of first names on the Spanish census.

    For example, if there were eight “Felipes,” all were indicated by one color, while “Joses” were indicated by another color.

    Er, what? Does anyone have any idea what that means, and how did it help him translate anything?

    Were the strings part of a census? Why would frequency of Spanish names have anything to do with Incan strings? I feel like a lot is missing from the article.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Friday January 19 2018, @08:30PM (1 child)

    by ledow (5567) on Friday January 19 2018, @08:30PM (#624883) Homepage

    It's a load of crap.

    There is no information in the article.

    The paper "is coming", i.e not even submitted.

    And the author can't articulate their findings in a few lines despite not needing to use any specialist language to do so.

    Also, as a mathematician, I'll tell you that the result can't be statistically significant and you could find a million correlations as-good-as, if not better, than what he claims to have found.

    But it's a nice way to get free press when websites like Soylent link it in without any further discussion, analysis, links or references.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday January 19 2018, @09:31PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday January 19 2018, @09:31PM (#624921)

      >The khipus were similar and came from a burial site in a river valley on the north coast of Peru. Urton had
      > previously discovered that the Spanish document referenced 132 taxpayers in a village.
      >Altogether, the six khipus had 132 six-cord groups.

      It takes a genius to put two numbers together! I'm glad nobody moved or died between the two sets of data.
      From there, I will posit that the knots represent the amount of cash people paid, not their names. Prove me wrong.

      > “There were so many different combinations of colors, whether solid colors or two colors spun together,”
      > Medrano said. “This looked like there was enough diversity in here to encode a language.”

      No, shit, Sherlock! The Incas

      from 1400 to 1532, relied on knotted strings to encode information

      How could it possibly be that this medium would have enough diversity to encode a language? I'm so glad nobody thought about it before, not even the TV show I was watching as a kid (in which the Inca girl read khipus every other episode). We are so blessed to have Harvard geniuses who are so highly capable of correctly explaining their passion to journalists...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:31PM (#624884)

    Well, for starters, the names on the Spanish census weren't Spanish names, but Incan names. Ie. the Spanish took a census of the Incas.

    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday January 20 2018, @01:05AM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Saturday January 20 2018, @01:05AM (#624993) Homepage

      Ohhh, okay, that makes slightly more sense of it. Not much, but slightly more.

      Still seems extremely tenuous.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk
  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday January 19 2018, @08:32PM (1 child)

    by Arik (4543) on Friday January 19 2018, @08:32PM (#624886) Journal
    It appears to be an entire article about a student leaping to one of the obvious conclusions many before him have leapt to, and... nothing else.

    Very odd. Does not appear to be newsworthy at all.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:43PM (#624888)

      Very odd. Does not appear to be newsworthy at all.

      Concur. How about a nice crunchy "breaking news" aristarchus submission, instead?

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by MostCynical on Friday January 19 2018, @09:31PM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Friday January 19 2018, @09:31PM (#624922) Journal

    headline needs correction.
    Should read "Student Pranks Boston Globe"

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex