The ancient Incas used quipus — knotted cords — to manage their vast empire. Even today, much of this mysterious writing system remains undecoded. Some South American communities are teaching what is left of this lost language to the next generation.
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00:00These girls are learning to tie some very special knots.
00:05It's an ancient and unusual accounting system.
00:08The Incas used it every day to count and record goods, textiles, ceramics, even llamas.
00:14The system is called quipu, which means knot in Quechua.
00:18The Incas used this as a kind of tool to manage their empire.
00:24But how can these complex structures be decoded?
00:28And were they used for more than just counting?
00:38We're heading to Santiago, the capital of Chile.
00:42This area was once part of the southernmost edge of the Incan Empire.
00:47Some ancient quipus are being kept here for preservation.
00:51The Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art has an especially large one on display.
00:57Archaeologists Varinha Varela and Felipe Armstrong are studying the intricate system.
01:03The Incas used quipus to manage their vast empire.
01:06They didn't have a written language, but there was plenty to administer and to document and record.
01:13They used it for censuses, animal counts, agricultural production, mining and more.
01:19It allowed the empire to understand what the provinces needed.
01:24Each community across the empire had its own quipu camayocs,
01:28officials responsible for managing and interpreting the quipus.
01:31Researchers believe they passed their knowledge down from generation to generation.
01:36Incan messengers called chasquis brought the quipus from the provinces to the capital Cusco,
01:41where they were evaluated and used for administration.
01:48The quipus consist of a main cord known as the mother rope,
01:53which will hold all the hanging threads.
01:58The subsidiary cords hang from the main cord,
02:03and sometimes those subsidiaries also have their own branches.
02:09There are different types of knots, like simple knots that are formed by looping the rope.
02:16You loop it and then you pull.
02:19Four loops tied in a simple knot represent the number four.
02:23One loop, two loops, three, four.
02:26There's also the figure eight knot, or double knot, which represents the number one.
02:33The position of the knots determine their place value, such as units of thousands, hundreds or tens.
02:41This is one thousand, four hundred, ninety and two.
02:47At the museum workshop in Santiago, the girls are learning how to tie number knots.
02:53This one is the year they were born, 2014.
02:58Although many quipus have been studied, only a handful have been fully decoded.
03:05Many questions remain, like what the different colors, shapes and materials mean.
03:14We still don't know what qualitative elements are being represented.
03:22We know the numbers, but we don't know whether they refer to animals, dishes, taxes or textiles.
03:36Researchers are still working to unravel this ingenious system.
03:42Much of the knowledge about quipus was lost during the Spanish conquest.
03:54When the Spanish arrived, they were mainly interested in territory, production and control,
03:59so numerical quipus were most relevant to them.
04:02They didn't care all that much about other kinds of quipus, like narrative or astronomical ones.
04:10Some indigenous communities in Chile and Peru still use simple versions of quipus.
04:16In workshops like this, the ancient knowledge is being passed on to the younger generation.
04:22The girls are learning there's another way of counting, by tying knots that are read by touch.
04:28It's hands-on math, a legacy of their ancestors.