Quipu at the Larco Museum in Lima • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS In South America, the Incas built an immense empire whose expansion began at the beginning of the 15th th century. The "Four Quarters Empire", or Tahuantinsuyu in the Quechua language, extended over the current territories of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and a large part of Chile, but also western Bolivia and northeastern Argentina, for a total area of approximately 2,000,000 km 2 The functioning of this empire had nothing to envy to that of the European kingdoms:based on compulsory labor imposed on the population, agricultural and manufacturing production was subject to centralization impeccably managed by a complex and hierarchical administration. The Incas, however, were unaware of writing. Why did they never develop this instrument, which was deemed essential to the cohesion of any empire? If they did not feel the need for it, it is because they had a unique and extremely precise recording system:the quipu. A complex system A simple bunch of knotted cords, the quipu (from Quechua khipu , “knot”) nevertheless constituted the basis of a complex system used by the guardians of the quipus (or quipucamayocs ) to record anything that might prove useful to the empire. The amount of information that these textile artefacts could retain amazed the Spanish chroniclers of the XVI th century. José de Acosta, for example, described it:“These quippos are memorials, or registers, which are made of branches on which there are various knots and various colors which signify various things, and it is a strange thing that they have expressed and represented by this means. Because the quippos are worth to them as much as books of history, laws, ceremonies, and accounts of their affairs. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa found it "admirable to see the details [that the Incas preserved] on these modest cords", while Martín de Murúa explained that "one remembers as if it were yesterday [the recorded events] , even long after”. To make a quipu, all you had to do was lay a rope horizontally (the main rope) and hang cords vertically from it (the secondary ropes), to which others could be attached (the subsidiary ropes). The information was written there in the form of knots placed on the hanging cords (secondary and subsidiary). The information to be transmitted lies in the number of knots and their placement on the multiple cords that make up the quipu. While the length of the cords could vary, the main cord was always longer than the segment from which the secondary cords hung. To store the quipu, you could roll up the protruding end and then embellish it with a distinctive sign, such as a colored feather, making it easier to recognize among the quipus stored in the same place. Generally made of cotton or wool from camelids (mainly alpaca), quipus sometimes consisted of plant fibers or even hair. Some chroniclers mention the existence of gold quipus, but none have been found among the more than 800 examples that have come down to us. Strings of different colors could be hung from the same quipu or from the same rope. Obtaining a monochrome or polychrome result depended on the color of the threads used and the way of wrapping them around the cord. We even found strings whose color changes halfway through. The Empire Archives The quipus have different types of knots, simple or compound, whose observation revealed that the choice to tie the cord to the left or to the right was deliberate. We also know that the making of the quipus was not irreversible:the recorded information could be modified by simply undoing and redoing the targeted knots. We now know that the way of braiding the threads, their color, the distance between the hanging cords and the main rope, the location of the knots, their shape, their direction and their number corresponded to the variables of the recorded data. The quipus left nothing to chance:every detail mattered. Their complexity undoubtedly made it possible to archive data of all kinds without difficulty:administrative (censuses, tax collection), genealogical, calendar, historical, religious, etc. In the XVI th century, Diego Dávalos y Figueroa said that he was walking with an officer of justice in a region of the Andes when they encountered a native hiding a quipu. Asked about its content, the man replied that the quipu traced everything that had happened on these lands since the end of the Inca Empire and would allow him, when it rose from its ashes, to report to his lords "of all the Spaniards who had passed on this royal path, of what they had asked for and bought and of all their deeds, good and bad". Decipher the code Many researchers have tried to decipher the code of the quipus. During the 1970s and 1980s, Marcia and Robert Ascher thus analyzed a corpus of 206 specimens of which they meticulously observed the nodes (type and location) and the strings (color, length and relationship). This study allowed them to discover the existence of numerical quipus based on a decimal notation system (unit, tens, hundreds, etc.), where each type of node corresponds to a value located from 0 to 9. It is therefore possible to "read" the numbers written on the cords by adding the number of units, tens, hundreds, etc. However, we do not know the meaning of the numerical values collected in this type of quipus and calculated thanks to the observations of the Ascher couple, for several reasons. To begin with, there are other variables whose meaning remains unknown, such as the color of the cords. We have also lost track of the oral messages that supplemented the information recorded in the quipus, like mnemonic devices. Finally, we do not know the characteristics of the writing system used in the “historical” quipus retracing the main episodes in the history of the Inca dynasties. We are therefore still far from understanding the full meaning of the quipus and perhaps we will never even decipher the enigmas posed by these "knots of memory". If they began by destroying them, the Spaniards quickly realized the usefulness of quipus and their deciphering, which they entrusted to natives. The conquistadors first considered the quipus as objects of idolatry that should be destroyed. The effectiveness of this registration system, however, prompted the Spaniards to change their minds:only a few years after having ordered the burning of the quipus, the colonial administration paradoxically encouraged their use for census purposes and entrusted this task to the natives, whom the priests themselves invited them to "meditate on their sins and make quipus of them" before going to confession. If the quipus of the colonial era no longer followed the rules in force under the Inca Empire and responded to the needs of the new government, the figure of the quipucamayoc remained in spite of everything and even played an important role within the administration. The fall of the Inca Empire therefore changed this ancestral tool without, however, shaking its foundations. This is why the Andes are still home to communities that perpetuate their use. Whether they serve as ritual objects or symbols of prestige, or more recently take the form of textile artefacts far removed from the Inca quipus, all testify to the deep roots of "these modest cords" in the organization of societies. Andes. Find out more The Incas, by César Itier, Les Belles Lettres, 2008.Myths, rituals and politics of the Incas in the turmoil of the Conquista, by Jan Szemínski and Mariusz Ziółkowski, L’Harmattan, 2015.Mysterious writings, by Dominique Becker and Fabrice Kircher, Pardès, 2008.
