Archaeological+Context

=Archaeological Context=

__Puruchuco__

In 1596, a set of 21 quipu were found within a vessel that was hidden in the floor of a high-status home in Puruchuco, Peru (Mann). 7 of those 21 quipu have been studied by Urton and Brezine in their Khipu Database Project, and now are considered evidence towards the movement of quipu within the hierarchy of the Inca administration.

__Caral__ Archaeologist Ruth Shady Solis, of the National University of San Marcos in Lima, had been escavating this site since 1994. They discovered the oldest known 'quipu' inside a cache located in a pyramid. Although it resembles the Inca quipu, the pendant strings are twisted around small sticks. It is "3,000 years older than the oldest previously known khipu, which date from the 9th century C.E. If so, then khipu, though younger than the world's first writing systems of Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics, arose inthe third millennium B.C.E. and are among humankind's oldest means of communication"(Mann).