Quipu (knotted-string record)

What it is

Cotton or wool cords hung from a main cord with knots of different type and position encoding numbers in positional base 10, colours and hierarchies. An accounting and record system without phonetic writing.

A quipu from Caral (c. 2500 BCE) is controversial; those from Wari (600-1000 CE) are the first secure examples, and the Inca systematised them.

What it led to

• Administration of a 12-million-person empire (Inca) without writing
• Censuses, tribute and state storehouses (qollqa)
• Record specialists (quipucamayoc) as a bureaucracy
• Debate over the definition of writing and over narrative encoding

Built on

• Cordage (twisted fibre string)c. 50 ka
• Indigo dye and American cotton textilec. 4000 BCE
• Caral monumental city and shicra seismic foundationsc. 2600 BCE
• Andean cotton weaving and backstrap loomc. 1000 BCE
• Andean cotton textile
• Andean decimal numeration

Made possible

• Inca quipuc. 1400
• Chasqui relay messengersc. 1450
• Qollqa: ventilated state storehousesc. 1450
• Yupana (Inca counting board)c. 1500
• Inca quipu
• Andean state accounting
• Inca storehouse system

Links

Sources✓ verified 2026-09-23

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273311842_Radiocarbon_chronology_of_Andean_khipus
• https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/from-middle-horizon-cordkeeping-to-the-rise-of-inka-khipus-in-the-central-andes/04964C31803194A5EA0F1565617F00C9