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=ANDEAN QUIPUS= by Stephanie Boothby



"Khipu" is the Quechua word for "knot", and is both the singular and plural form. "Quipu" is the Spanish version of the Quechua word. The quipu can be made from either cotton or wool. There is one main cord, called the primary cord, and hanging off of it are the pendant cords. Any cords attached to the pendant cords are called subsidiaries, and some have up to 12 of these. When the quipu are displayed, they can be stretched out horizontally, so that the pendant cords hang parallel to each other, or with the primary cord curved so that the pendant cords radiate outwards.



Most of the quipu are from when the Inca Empire ruled, from about 1400 to 1532 CE, and although during the Middle Horizon there is evidence for colored strings hanging from a cord, they do not seem to have the "more consistent system of knots and cord positioning which characterizes most of the khipus surviving from the Inka and early colonial periods"(Sillar 6). There are currently 600 pre-hispanic recovered quipu in museums and private collections all over the world.



The quipu are extremely important when looking at how the Inca utilized them in their conquest and control of their empire. The Inca did not have conventional written writing, but there is a debate as to whether the quipus can be considered a form of writing. The knotted strings convey a message, but it us unknown whether it was purely numerical, represented words, or was a combination of several possibilities. However, the quipu may have been standardized across the Inca Empire, in order for different people to be able to gain the same meaning from the knotted strings. They kept track of goods, people, labor, etc. “The attested uses include censuses; calendars; inventories of all sorts including weapons, foodstuffs, and clothing; tribute records; royal chronicles and chansons de geste; records of sacred places or beings and their sacrifices; successions and perhaps genealogies; postal messages; criminal trials; routes and stations; herd records; and game-keeping records”(Salomon 11). This allowed for the quipucamayac to keep track of everything that a government needs to record in order to successfully rule an empire as large and complex as the Inca's.