In the Americas…with no written language, early Peruvian knowledge was transmitted parent to child

By Rose McIlveen

The Incas kept records on devices of knotted cords called quipus (being held by the figure at right). They also served a ‘memory joggers’ for dynastic history or religion.

The Incas’ quipu was a device with strings of different colors attached to a main strand and knotted at various intervals, a place notation system of sorts that was used for record keeping and as ‘memory joggers’ for dynastic history or religion. Trouble was, the maker of an individual quipu was the only one who could fully understand its content.

But Conrad is used to sorting through the bits and pieces of an excavation, searching for clues to a culture with no written language.

Conrad can easily sum up what archaeologists so far have learned about the Chimu empire of Peru, which flourished in the 14th and 15th centuries. Its people were defeated by the Incas by 1470, and its capital was a showy archaeological site, Chan Chan. The Chimu generally lived by farming and fishing, with most of their meat protein coming from the sea. And as early as 2000 B.C., the Chimu had mastered irrigation, a technological skill that made maize farming possible.

A kind of pre-ordained caste system defined their religion, according to Conrad. “The Chimu believed that nobility and commoners were created separately—nobility were descendants of two stars, and commoners the descendants of two other stars,” he said. “They didn’t have a middle class as we think of it. What was more or less the middle level in Chimu society between peasants and nobility were usually skilled craft workers who were attached to the state.”

The Chimu had enlarged their empire up and down the coast of today’s Peru, from Ecuador southward, seemingly with a professional officer corps and draftees from the commoners who paid their taxes by serving in the army.

According to Conrad, all of the elements of the Chimu society pre-suppose some kind of training to pass down skills. How was this done without a written language?

“Presumably, a lot of knowledge was just transmitted from parents to children. If you grew up in a farming village, you learned what you needed to know from your parents. But, obviously when you look at some of the canal systems and buildings, it’s evident that there were people who were kind of specialists. Were the jobs hereditary? Were some of them sons of engineers? We presume so,” said Conrad.

The Incas

One intriguing clue to the conquering Incas is the quipu, a device with strings of different colors attached to a main strand and knotted at various intervals. “There is the color of the yarn, its twist and the knots,” said Conrad. “All of that carried meaning. There was a place notation system that was a decimal counting. The highest known one seems to have what would be the equivalent of the hundred thousands column on it.”

What were they used for? “Inventories, censuses, tax rolls,” Conrad said. “They also served as memory joggers for dynastic history or religion. Anybody could have picked up the thing and said, ‘OK. There’s nine knots in the hundreds place here and two in the tens place and seven in the in the last one, so this string says 927.’”

Nine hundred twenty seven what? That’s the problem. The person who created the quipu—a quipu camayoq—was the only one who could answer that question. Thus, the quipu hardly served as written language.

“It was only a form of record keeping,” said Conrad. “The quipu was unlike Mayan hieroglyphics. Presumably, if you were a Mayan who could read hieroglyphs, you could read any other Mayan hieroglyphic inscription. The quipu camayoq could only read his particular set of quipus. If he picked up one from somebody else, he’d be in the same boat I’m in, trying to understand them.”

While the Chimu and the Incas left no written record, the Spanish who arrived in the 16th century did. Archaeologists have pored over what the Spanish wrote, hoping for clues to fill in gaps between the known and unknown of these cultures. Unfortunately, the Spanish were selective about what they recorded.

“They wrote a lot about things that interested them and not so much about other things,” said Conrad. “For example, the Spaniards wrote little about how children were educated. We know the children from provincial nobility who were being groomed for high administrative office were brought to Cuzco, the Inca capital, and went through some kind of formal training. It almost sounds like a four-year university course.

“The first year, they learned the Inca language. The second year they learned Inca religion. The third year, they learned how to use quipus and the fourth they learned Inca history. Then they went back to their provinces to supervise as representatives of the imperial government.”

So without a written language to turn to, Conrad continues to work in the classroom of excavation. He gathers clues and analyzes the mysteries of a culture from the past knowing that space is not the last frontier.