Instead of books or scrolls, the Inca used knotted cords to encode and pass on information. According to documents from the Spanish colonial, these so -called khipus were only made by high -ranking male bureaucrats. An analysis of human hair that was woven into a KHIPU now suggests that the simple people also created such knotty records. Because the composition of the hair suggests that the person did not feed on meat and corn beer as usual with the Inca elites. Instead, she apparently primarily consumed tubers and vegetables-a typical “simple people’s meal.”
Many centuries before the invention of the computers, the Inca already used a kind of binary code: they held information in the form of complex systems from knotted cords, so -called khipus. Each KHIPU consists of a long main line to which numerous knotted side strands are attached. The position of the nodes for numbers and possibly characters. Material, color and direction of rotation of the individual strands also transmitted. In this way, for example, the Inca could lead tax lists and maybe also save stories.
Hair as a signature
“On the basis of Spanish -speaking colonial chronicles in particular, it is traditionally assumed that KHIPUS was produced exclusively by male bureaucratic elites,” explains a team around Sabine Hyland from the University of St Andrews in Great Britain. Demach mainly used high civil servants or priests of the Inca Empire. However, reports of contemporary indigenous chroniclers suggest that, for example, women could also become “KHipukamayuqs”, i.e. specialists in KHIPUS.
In order to find out more about the people who created KHIPUS, Hyland and their colleagues have now analyzed a KHIPU from around 1498 AD, whose main strand consists of human hair. “Historically speaking, human hair in a KHIPU served as a kind of signature to identify the creator of the KHipus,” report the researchers. In fact, the hair of the khip you examined can tell us a lot about its owner to this day. With a length of 104 centimeters, it had to be over at least eight years. Since some of the hair were already white in the strand, they probably came from one person in advanced age.
Plant -based nutrition
The researchers received even more precise insights by examining small samples from both ends of a hair with the help of mass spectrometry. The isotope ratio of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur in the hair identified above reveals how the person who belonged to the hair has fed. “Our analysis showed that this individual consumed a diet characteristic for simple citizens,” report Hyland and her colleagues.
Specifically, low nitrogen values in the hair sample suggested that the person who had woven their hair in the KHIPU hardly consumed animal proteins. In the Inca elites, on the other hand, meat made an important part of the diet. The carbon isotopes also suggested that the individual feeded primarily on so-called C3 plants, for example tubers and vegetables, but not from nutrient-rich, highly productive C4 plants like corn. This also does not match the nutrition of high-standing inca personalities, for which corn beer played an important role.
“It may be possible-albeit unlikely-that a member of the Inca elite has not eaten meat over several years,” writes the research team. “A scenario in which an official KHipukamayuq should not have drunk a corn beer is difficult to imagine.” According to Hyland and her colleagues, their results therefore indicate that Khipus were not only made by high -ranking bureaucrats, but also by simple people from the people.
Source: Sabine Hyland (University of St Andrews, UK) et al., Science Advances, Doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adv1950
