Five centuries ago, the Incas ruled the western half of South America with the help of a unique form of writing based on coloured and knotted cords. These strings, called khipus, recorded major events, tracked economic matters, and even encoded biographies and poetry, according to the Spanish chroniclers who witnessed their use.
Most khipus have knots that indicate numbers that we can “read”, but we’ve lost the ability to interpret what those numbers mean. Recent discoveries are bringing us closer to deciphering these mysterious strings. In a remote community set high in the Peruvian Andes, my team and I have found khipus that were used by villagers to track climate change.
