Duncan Craig Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Katherine Reece Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > 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.
> >

Seems like a very strict standard given that you build a whole theory on :

"From China, James Legges translation of the Tao Te Ching, there is Lao Tzus advice to the ruler, "I would make the people return to the use of knotted cords instead of written characters." pg 122 Ch. 80Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1891 and, associating a Chinese word for the knotted cord, this "In earliest times knotted cords were used in government but the later sages substituted written documents and tallies so that the officials were kept in order and the people had a clear idea of their duties."

As a matter of fact the Caral quipu is not "some string wrapped around a stick" to quote the Science paper:

"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."

i,e, there are strings pendant from a base string but these strings instead of being loose are wrapped around little sticks.

Bernard
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Kat
> >
> > Owner/Head Moderator
> > The Hall of Ma'at
> > Amun: Co-Owner/Co-Moderator
> > Contributing author to Archaeological
> Fantasies:
> > How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past
> and
> > misleads the public
> > Kat's Personal Site
> >
> >
> > "It is a capital mistake to theorize in
> advance of
> > the facts."
>
>
>