New Details Emerge About Ancient Inca Counting Technology
The Inca were a pre-Columbian civilization whose empire sprawled along South America’s Pacific Coast from the 15th to the 16th century CE. Like other Andean peoples, they used khipus (also known as quipus), an intricate cord and knot system used to record information. According to Spanish colonial-era sources, only male Inca elites could make khipus. A new study, however, challenges this widespread notion. In a paper published today in Science Advances, an international team of researchers inve