
A College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots - leahculver
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/khipus-inca-empire-harvard-university-colonialism.amp
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da_chicken
> Medrano comes from a Mexican-American family and speaks Spanish, so
> understanding the Spanish census document was no problem. Handling numbers
> and data came naturally to him as well, as an economics major. The
> challenge, as both Medrano and Urton note, seemed to demand a perfect
> alignment of his skills and interests.

I wonder how many unsolved problems there are out there with this problem.
Problems that are solvable, they just lack one mind that can view the issue
from the proper perspective.

I suspect that as the breadth of human knowledge increases, this type of
problem will become more and more common.

~~~
stevenwoo
The recent lichen genetic revelation that rewrote textbook definitions is
similar, kinda magical coincidences in all the things that had to fall into
place (or survivorship bias?/good writer telling story).

If you are not familiar with it -
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-
gu...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-
montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/)

~~~
jefurii
> Thanks to his family background, he could speak German, and he had heard
> that many universities there charged no tuition fees. His missing
> qualifications were still a problem, but one that the University of
> Gottingen decided to overlook. “They said that under exceptional
> circumstances, they could enroll a few people every year without
> transcripts,” says Spribille. “That was the bottleneck of my life.”

This marks a significant point in America's status as an educational and
scientific power in the world.

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Sniffnoy
Non-mobile link: [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/khipus-inca-empire-
har...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/khipus-inca-empire-harvard-
university-colonialism)

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partycoder
Since the paper has not been published, just be conservative and wait for peer
review before making big announcements.

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neves
Great, I went to Peru last year and all guides said that the Inca knots were a
mistery.

~~~
photojosh
I grew up there and left in '99... they've always been a mystery. So excited
to see that they've been (at least partially) deciphered!

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laretluval
Anyone have a link to the paper?

~~~
HAL21
It is titled "Toward the Decipherment of a Set of Mid-Colonial Khipus from the
Santa Valley, Coastal Peru" and is due in January.

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TN1ck
What they actually found out:

“Manny has proven that the way in which pendant cords are tied to the top cord
indicates which social group an individual belonged to. This is the first time
anyone has shown that and it's a big deal,”

~~~
tzahola
So the knots are basically census records? How disappointing :/

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Writing in general began as accounting practices. Put your grain in the common
granary, get some token (pebbles) for each measure you put in. Redeem them
later. Then they started keeping the tokens in a box. Then they wrapped the
tokens in clay envelopes marked with your family symbol. But they had to keep
breaking them open to count them, then re-wrapping them, so they started
putting hash marks on the outside of the envelope. Then they finally realized
they didn't need to put anything in the clay, just the hash marks. Voila,
writing!

~~~
crescentfresh
What are you summarizing here exactly, how money was invented? It sounds very
neat!

~~~
nickbauman
Babylonian Cuneiform.

