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Interesting article on khipu (bundles of knotted strings) and the possibility they may be the equivalent of a written language for the long lost civilization.
... if centuries of scholarship are to be believed, the Inca, whose rule began 2,000 years after Homer, never figured out how to write. It's an enigma known as the Inca paradox, and for nearly 500 years it has stood as one of the great historical puzzles of the Americas. But now a Harvard anthropologist named Gary Urton may be close to untangling the mystery.
His quest revolves around strange, once-colorful bundles of knotted strings called khipu (pronounced KEY-poo). The Spanish invaders noticed the khipu soon after arriving but never understood their significance – or how they worked.
[...]
Most Incan scholars are intrigued by Urton's ideas, though a few skeptics have noted that he has not produced any proof that his binary code carries meaning, much less that the khipu contain narratives. The Harvard professor concedes that some of the information he's looking at may not signal anything. But he is convinced the khipu have stories to tell, and he has some history on his side. José de Acosta, a Jesuit missionary sometimes called the Pliny of the New World, wrote a description of the khipu at the end of the 16th century. In it, he describes how the "woven reckonings" were used to record financial transactions involving hens, eggs, and hay. But he also noted that the native people considered the khipu to be "witnesses and authentic writing." "I saw a bundle of these strings," he wrote, "on which a woman had brought a written confession of her whole life and used it to confess just as I would have done with words written on paper."
His quest revolves around strange, once-colorful bundles of knotted strings called khipu (pronounced KEY-poo). The Spanish invaders noticed the khipu soon after arriving but never understood their significance – or how they worked.
[...]
Most Incan scholars are intrigued by Urton's ideas, though a few skeptics have noted that he has not produced any proof that his binary code carries meaning, much less that the khipu contain narratives. The Harvard professor concedes that some of the information he's looking at may not signal anything. But he is convinced the khipu have stories to tell, and he has some history on his side. José de Acosta, a Jesuit missionary sometimes called the Pliny of the New World, wrote a description of the khipu at the end of the 16th century. In it, he describes how the "woven reckonings" were used to record financial transactions involving hens, eggs, and hay. But he also noted that the native people considered the khipu to be "witnesses and authentic writing." "I saw a bundle of these strings," he wrote, "on which a woman had brought a written confession of her whole life and used it to confess just as I would have done with words written on paper."
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