SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Harvard Student Helps Crack Mystery of Inca Code
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 36 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
I am a bookaholic. If you are a decent person, you will not sell me
another book.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday January 19 2018, @09:31PM
>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
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...