Katherine Reece Wrote:
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> Quote:[...] archaeologist Ruth Shady Solis of the
> National University of San Marcos in Lima has
> independently unveiled what is seemingly the
> oldest khipu--or, perhaps, proto-khipu--ever
> discovered. Found in a cache buried inside a
> pyramid at Caral, an ancient city north of Lima
> that Shady's team has been excavating since 1994
> (Science, 7 January, p. 34), the object resembles
> an Inca khipu, except that the pendant strings are
> twisted around small sticks.
>
> According to Shady, it is more than 3000 years
> older than the oldest previously known khipu,
> which date from the 9th century C.E. If so, then
> khipu, though younger than the world's first
> writing systems of Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian
> hieroglyphics, arose in the third millennium
> B.C.E. and are among humankind's oldest means of
> communication.
>
> The Caral artifact's apparent great age of 4000 to
> 4500 years "indirectly strengthens the case" that
> the khipu were "more than numeric," notes Daniel
> H. Sandweiss of the University of Maine in Orono.
> Ancient writing methods such as cuneiform evolved
> over many centuries from accounting records, as
> scribes invented symbols to identify what was
> being counted. "If what Ruth has found really is a
> khipu ancestor," Sandweiss says, "then khipu would
> be following the pattern of other writing
> systems."
>
> "Unraveling khipu's secrets: researchers move
> toward understanding the communicative power of
> the Inca's enigmatic knotted strings, which wove
> an empire together." by Charles C. Mann Science
> August 12, 2005 page 1008
>
> Okay, good work! Filing cabinets, what a novel idea. Anyway. I just can't put back the earliest khipu date by three thousand years on the one specimen, especially since what it amounts to is some string wrapped around a stick. This is a textile based society, after all. I saw the abstract, which also didn't sound all that convinced. I'd want to see the whole magilla. You have to admit thats an awfully big re-adjustment on the basis of one sample. I can't even concieve of how it survived that long unless it was coated with that red stuff. And that would strengthen the case for it being a proto-khipu. From its provenance in a constructed pyramid., it could well be a line measuring instrument as is still used today.
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> Kat
>
> Owner/Head Moderator
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> "It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of
> the facts."