In the early years of the Spanish conquest of Peru, Spanish officials often relied on the quipus to settle disputes over local tribute payments or goods production. Most information recorded on the quipus studied to date by researchers consists of numbers in a decimal system, such as "Indian chiefs ascertain which province had lost more than another and balanc the losses between them" after the Spanish invasion. On the lower left is a yupana – an Inca calculating device. " Quipu" is the traditional Spanish spelling, while " khipu" reflects the recent Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift.Ī quipucamayoc in El primer nueva corónica. The terms " quipu" and " khipu" are simply spelling variations on the same word. " Quipu" is a Quechua word meaning "knot" or "to knot". In most Quechua varieties, the term is kipu. Khipu (pronounced, plural: khipukuna) is the word for " knot" in Cusco Quechua. Quipu is the Spanish spelling and the most common spelling in English. Knotted strings unrelated to quipu have been used to record information by the ancient Chinese, Tibetans and Japanese. It is unclear how many intact quipus still exist and where, as many have been stored away in mausoleums.
In several modern villages, quipus have continued to be important items for the local community. As the region was subsumed under the Spanish Empire, quipus were mostly replaced by European writing and numeral systems, and most quipu were identified as idolatrous and destroyed, but some Spaniards promoted the adaptation of the quipu recording system to the needs of the colonial administration, and some priests advocated the use of quipus for ecclesiastical purposes. They subsequently played a key part in the administration of the Kingdom of Cusco and later the Inca Empire, flourishing across the Andes from c. Objects that can be identified unambiguously as quipus first appear in the archaeological record in the first millennium AD (though debated quipus are much earlier ). The configuration of the quipus has been "compared to string mops." Archaeological evidence has also shown the use of finely carved wood as a supplemental, and perhaps sturdier, base to which the color-coded cords would be attached. A quipu could have only a few or thousands of cords. The cords stored numeric and other values encoded as knots, often in a base ten positional system. The Inca people used them for collecting data and keeping records, monitoring tax obligations, collecting census records, calendrical information, and for military organization. Ī quipu usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. Quipu (also spelled khipu) are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America. Quipu in the Museo Machu Picchu, Casa Concha, Cusco
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