The Inca used Quipu — knotted cords whose colours, knot types and arrangement encoded data — for calculations and record-keeping. Its knots represented numbers in a decimal positional system, supporting accounting, census and administrative work across the empire. The Inca had no known conventional script, but they did have a numerical system. Quipu was a portable information-recording and calculation device, not a tapestry abacus.
Inca used Quipu knots for calculations without a conventional script
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Key facts
- Quipu knots represented numbers in a base-10 positional system.
- The Inca used Quipu for calculations, accounting and administrative records; it was a knotted-cord information system, not a tapestry abacus or their only recording method.
- The claim that the Inca had “no numbers” is false: they used a decimal numerical system.
- The stoneworking claim is unsupported by the cited results. The Pythagoras claim is also false: Euclid’s Elements, written around 300 BCE, presents the Pythagorean theorem, far less than 1,000 years after Pythagoras.
Sources
The Inka khipu - Smarthistorysmarthistory.org
Inka khipus are bundles of woolen cords tied together with knots added to them to encode information. Some are all a natural beige cotton color.
Knots That Remember: How the Inca Recorded a Civilization ...uslanguageservices.com
Trace the story of quipus and learn how color, knots, and texture carried data without writing in the Inca world.
Quipus, The Inca Language of Knotsneh.gov
Tied into the pendant cords are a variety of knots that, depending on their type and position, encode various pieces of information, including values from a ...
Quipu - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
The Inca, in particular, used knots tied in a decimal positional system to store numbers and other values in quipu cords. Depending on use and the amount of ...
Quipu | Smithsonian Institutionsi.edu
Quipus (kee-poo), sometimes called talking knots, were recording devices used by the Inka Empire, the largest empire in pre-Columbian ...
The Knots in the Quipu, and in the Friar's Beltmath.stonybrook.edu
The first few long knots are in the table: the quipu knot 2 is $5_1$, 3 gives $7_1$ and 4 gives $9_1$. There are 165 distinct knots with 10 crossings; the table ...
Knots representing numbers: The mathematics of the Incasenglish.elpais.com
Inca counting system uses three fundamental types of knots: simple, one-turn knots (s); long knots with one or more additional turns (L); and ...
Quipu: The Inca Knot System Explained & Historymachutravelperu.com
The single knots can go: Ten Thousand Thousand Hundreds Tens The long knots: The “eight” knot: a long knot with five turns,
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