Quipu and Quellca: numbers and writing of the Incas
Quipu were a set of cords connected by knots used to store information by the Incas. They can also be defined as a kind of accounting registers.
The first scholars who tried to understand, in a scientific way, how the Incas used the Quipu were Leland L. Locke of the Natural History Museum in New York and Erland Nordenskiold.
From 1923 to 1925 they assembled and analyzed 68 Quipu specimens.
Following information obtained from historians of the 16th and 17th centuries, it is clear that the Incas used a decimal numbering system made up of simple and compound nodes. The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in his Royal Commentaries (1609), reported that the Quipu were twisted ropes that were attached perpendicularly to a central rope. According to him, knots were of three types: simple, double and compound and were used to represent numbers.
In the language of the Incas, Quechua, the word Quipu meant knot, and was synonymous with number, count. Usually three types of knots were used to represent a number: the ones closest to the horizontal support string were the hundreds, the middle ones were the tens and the last ones were the ones.
In 1912 Locke subjected Quipu B8713 to in-depth analysis. This item consists of 24 strings in series of 6 groups. Each group of strings has a corresponding string that extends in the opposite direction to that of the groups, whose value corresponds to the total value of the group, even if represented with different nodes.
For example: in the first group there are 4 strings: the first has no knot (value zero), the second has a knot in the middle position (value 10), the third has a knot with six inserts in the low position (value 6), and the fourth has a knot in the low position (value 1), so the total value is 17. All this agrees with the related rope, which has a knot in the middle position (value 10) and a seven-fold knot in low position (value 7), so the total value is 17.
Based on these studies it can be concluded that the Quipu served as objects for counting or for storing numerical information. There are various theories and suppositions, however, which maintain that the Quipu were not only used to represent numbers, but also complex ideas and generic information on the nature of the things enumerated, for example agricultural commodities or animals.
According to Garcilaso de la Vega it was the colors (and their mixtures) that gave an extra-numeral meaning to the Quipu. His statements were confirmed by archaeological research, which proved that there were white, blue, yellow, black, red, green, grey, brown Quipu, even with different shades. The position between the strings and the distance between them was also very important for the meaning of what was wanted to be expressed. Again according to Garcilaso, Quipu were used in demographic censuses: ropes of a certain color represented the elderly, while those of other shades referred to adults and children.
It is also believed that the way the ropes were knotted together may have represented an abstract idea. For example, a rope whose knots faced left or right could mean the idea of good or bad, intelligent or stupid, strong or weak. The people who were responsible for deciphering or interpreting the Quipu were called, during the empire of the Incas, Quipucamayos. They were probably learned officials who were part of the upper caste of the empire's government.
If we instead analyze the possibility that there was some form of writing in the Inca empire, our research becomes much more complex.
It is certain that upon the arrival of the conquistadors the only way to communicate was orally, however it is possible that, among the restricted caste of Inca learned priests, an archaic writing system was in use, probably used by the previous Tiwanaku or from other Amazonian cultures unknown to date. This enigmatic form of writing has been given the name Quellca (handwriting, in Quechua).
One of the most mysterious objects is the so-called Fuente Magna, a stone basin whose internal edge is decorated with strange hieroglyphic inscriptions. The external part, however, is decorated with strange anthropomorphic and zoomorphic shapes in bas-relief.
For some, the Fuente Magna, found in the Chua hacienda near Lake Titicaca, is the equivalent of the Rosetta stone of American civilization, for others it is simply a fake. In fact, the hieroglyphs represented there are very similar to cuneiform writing, which makes one think of Mesopotamian or Akkadian, dating back to 3500 BC.
The finding seems so completely far from reality. What is a stone container with cuneiform characters doing at 3800 meters above sea level, near Lake Titicaca? On the other hand, supporters of its veracity explain that the farmers, owners of the land where the basin was found, would never have had the necessary historical and archaeological knowledge to masterfully carve a stone container with cuneiform characters that are not repeated, but which really seem to indicate a strange and remote method of writing.
Even in the walls of Tiwanaku, whose foundation, according to Arthur Posnansky, dates back to 10,000 BC, there are strange symbolic signs which are perhaps a sort of proto-hieroglyphs, but the most astonishing find was the Pokotia monolith, an anthropomorphic statue about two meters high discovered by Bernardo Biados and other researchers near Lake Titicaca in 2002. After careful analysis of the statue, strange hieroglyphic inscriptions were found in both the legs and the back of the sculpture, very similar to the cuneiform ones of the Fuente Magna.
According to some researchers, the inscriptions on the Pokotia monolith are in Sumerian and tell of an oracle, called Putaki, much frequented in ancient times. Is it possible that the Sumerians traveled to Lake Titicaca? For now there is no definitive proof of this amazing hypothesis, but it is possible that ancient peoples of the Old World introduced themselves into South America in remote times. However, there are other strange similarities between the language of the Sumerians and Aymara (spoken by the Colla natives of Bolivia) and Quechua (the language of the Incas, still spoken today in Peru). Renowned linguists maintain that there is a common basis between the three languages.
Another important discovery is the so-called stone of Oruro, a city located halfway between La Paz and Potosì. In the stone there are various hieroglyphics arranged in a regular manner alongside a profile of the face of a cacique or indigenous leader. Another circular stone with strange ancient markings was also found nearby.
According to some 17th century authors, such as Fernando Montesinos in his Memorias Historiales (1644), the ancient hieroglyphic writing, which was called Quellca and printed on banana leaves, was prohibited, for unknown reasons, starting from the government of Pachacutec.
According to some researchers, Quellca derives from the mysterious writings of other South American or Oceanic peoples. In fact, even in Brazil there are signs of an archaic writing, in some ways similar to Sumerian characters, as reported by the writer Alfredo Brandao in his book Escrita pre-historica do Brasil. Other researchers draw parallels between Quellca and Rongo Rongo, the enigmatic spelling used on the island of Pascua in historical times.
Is it possible that Quellca was totally prohibited during the early 16th century and used secretly by learned priests who were entrusted with the task of preserving the traditions and passing them on to posterity?
It is certain that already a few decades after the arrival of the first Spaniards at the site of Tiwanaku (the writer Pedro Cieza de Leon arrived there in 1549), a strange form of ideographic writing was in use among some classes of erudite priests, perhaps derived from Quellca, but which had many symbolic elements typical of Christianity, such as crosses and churches.
Is it possible that the archives of the Incas, which have never been found, are hidden somewhere in the jungle? In fact, legends tell of a group of elected priests who hid in a place in the mountains located ten days' walk from Cusco, where they founded a city equal to their capital, now in the hands of foreign intruders. In this mysterious fortress, called Paititi (from the Quechua Paikikin, equal to), they would have hidden, in addition to large quantities of gold, also the sacred books on their origins, written in Quellca, the key to the true History of the New World.
YURI LEVERATTO
