
A lost language encoded in Inca cords - mikemoka
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931972-600-we-thought-the-incas-couldnt-write-these-knots-change-everything/
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starbeast
Is pretty lucky that us visiting Europeans didn't know there could be writing
in them, otherwise we would have burnt the lot long ago, like we did with the
written records of the Maya.

~~~
pjmlp
Walking around on the surviving remains of Maya and Aztec cities is quite
impressive.

As European it saddens me how we almost wiped everything out back then.

~~~
starbeast
From what I have read, there are maybe 14 surviving books out of the hundreds
of thousands that we took. Possibly less since that museum fire. We destroyed
2000 years of an entire continents written history. And many people simply do
not give a shit.

Was talking to someone who identifies strongly as Christian about this
recently. She said that she didn't care what had happened to the Maya, because
these people practiced human sacrifice. I had to point out to her that you do
not get to complain about human sacrifice after committing genocide.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
In The True History of the Conquest of New Spain [1] (a first-hand account of
Hernán Cortés' expedition in Mexico, that brought down Monetzuma's Aztec
empire) there is a passage where the author, discusses the matter of human
sacrifice and cannibalism with some local priests (I think these are not
Aztec, but Tlascalan priests, from one of the cities allied to Cortés).

I can't find the passage in my hard copy of the book, but, from memory, the
priests basically state that offering human sacrifices to the gods is the
pious and proper thing to do. Castillo ends up persuaded of this, although he
continues to abhor the acts they perform, of course. These priests also
practiced self-mutilation, so they had noses and fingers, etc, missing. I
think the point was that they were offering parts of themselves, too, as
sacrifice to their gods.

There's no doubt that human sacrifice is a barbaric custom, that was
historically practiced by few societies in the same scale as it was by the
Aztecs. However, it is important to understand that, to them, it was not an
act of evil, or even of righteous revenge towards their enemies. It was an act
of worship to their gods.

My point is that we cannot apply our own concept of morality, which is
probably influenced by the dominant religion of the western world,
Christianity, to the manner by which people lived their life in a society that
might have, for all intends and purposes, been on another planet for most of
its history. If we are to judge those people, it must be on their own terms.
And on their own terms, human sacrifice and cannibalism was what their faith
(and therefore, their morality) _required_ of them.

_____________________

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conqu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conquista_de_la_Nueva_Espa%C3%B1a)

[2] Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_D%C3%ADaz_del_Castillo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_D%C3%ADaz_del_Castillo)

~~~
starbeast
>There's no doubt that human sacrifice is a barbaric custom

Our own culture believes in sacrificing humans to the things that we worship.
We just dress it up differently.

>"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure"

\- Thomas Jefferson

~~~
zipwitch
Think of all the lives that went into building the beginnings of the
industrial age: miners, construction workers, pedestrians electrocuted or run
down by automobiles. Even today this continues in slightly different ways - as
one example, _thirty-seven thousand_ of our fellow citizens here in the US
died on our roads last year. And we just think to ourselves that's just how it
works.

And that's before getting into our cultural celebration of heroic sacrifice,
or other ways we trade in human lives, both our own and others.

------
cultus
The organization of the Incan Empire was really incredible. There really was
nothing quite like it until modern times. The state storehouses alluded to in
the article can still be seen all over on mountainsides in Peru (they were
always built off the valley floor where humidity is lower). These stored so
much grain that the Incan empire really didn't have famines. After conquest,
the Spanish enslaved the Quechua and generally had them mine instead of grow
food. The grain in the silos fed them for several years.

I have to think that quipus can encode non-numeric information to make
something like that possible.

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lurquer
>If we are to judge those people, it must be on their own terms. And on their
own terms, human sacrifice and cannibalism was what their faith (and
therefore, their morality) required of them.

So, you're ok with the Spanish wiping them out? According to the mores of the
time, Spain's actions were perfectly acceptable.

~~~
dang
This comment breaks the site guidelines. For example: "Please respond to the
strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

That guideline is there because not following it leads to flamewar. Please
review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and follow it and also the others.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542311)
and marked it off-topic.

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syastrov
This data is begging to be analyzed by machine learning algorithms.

~~~
flocial
I just happen to be reading Clive Cussler's Inca Gold (1994) where they use
computers to decode a quipu cord from scratch in about an hour and a half. I'd
love to see the spreadsheet used for the initial insight.

~~~
tragomaskhalos
I actually love these kind of trashy archeology-themed books, where the
brilliant linguist decyphers the ancient writing system over his/her
lunchbreak, but it's rather spoiled by the inconvenient fact that the actual
process - mountains of data, years of slog - is so unsexy by comparison. Plus,
there is never a Rosetta Stone (that would make it too easy!), whereas almost
every real-world decipherment has needed something like one. The only
exception I can think of is Linear B; I've always thought it'd be a
fascinating exercise to repeat Ventris' painstaking cataloguing and cross-
referencing on a computer to see if his breakthrough could be repeated more
quickly, or automatically.

