ABSTRACT
A quipu is a collection of cords with knots tied in them. When held in the hands, a quipu is unimpressive; surely, in our culture, it might be mistaken for a tangled old mop. For the Spanish, the Inca quipu was the equivalent of the Western airplane for native Australians. The output of gold mines, the composition of workforces, the amount and kinds of tribute, the contents of storehouses were all recorded on quipus. Quipus probably predate the coming to power of the Incas. Quipumakers knew which end was which; we will assume that they start at the looped ends and proceed to the knotted ends. Color is fundamental to the symbolic system of the quipu. The quipumaker designed each quipu using color coding to relate some cords together and to distinguish them from other cords. An obvious contrast between the quipumaker and his Sumerian and Egyptian counterparts is that the former used no instruments to record.
