Re: khipu project (was kitchens)
Re: khipu project (was kitchens)
- Subject: Re: khipu project (was kitchens)
- From: Rich Morin <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 09:09:13 -0800
At 9:46 AM -0500 2/28/03, Carrie Brezine wrote:
... They kept track of tribute, history, myth, census, calendars,
and who knows what else on textile artifacts called khipu. (If you
do a web search, also try the spelling quipu. Orthographic changes
for Quechua words are underway). Khipu are networks of strings with
knots. Many times the knots have numerical values; in other cases
the meaning is not so clear.
This reminds me of a military innovation made by Alexander the Great.
The problem he was trying to solve was the coordination of attacks by
physically separate units. The solution was to give each unit a band
of cloth with a certain number of knots in it. The timekeeper for the
unit would count for a while, move to the next knot, etc. In musical
circles, this has come to be known as "Alexander's Rag Time Band".
-r
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