Ongoing research from the University of St Andrews has discovered that khipus, the mysterious string writing of the Inkas, have been used to record climate change.
Khipus are knotted-string devices that were used in the Inka Empire for communication and for recording information. Khipus are little understood, in part because most khipus are in museum collections, outside of the context where they were used.
Sabine Hyland, Professor of World Religions at the University of St Andrews, has been studying this form of writing throughout her career. However, her recent discoveries have shed new light on how Khipus were used, and challenged existing theories about Inkan culture.
Professor Hyland was invited to the remote, Peruvian indigenous community of Santa Leonor de Jucul to study their collection of ancient khipus, which had never before been shown to outsiders. It contains 97 khipus, including the world's longest at over 68 metres long.
It was discovered that these khipus were kept and consulted as a record of past environmental conditions. These are the first khipus ever proven to have been used for this purpose; they demonstrate how carefully ancient Andean people observed and recorded climatic conditions and change. Each khipu recorded how villagers in the past responded to climate change. If there was a drought, for example, the villagers would give offerings for rain at a sacred place in the mountains and then record on the khipu the site of the offering and what was given.
It was also discovered that makers of the khipus "signed" the khipus with locks of their hair.
It's been thought, based on descriptions by Spanish chroniclers, that very few people in the Inka empire knew how to make khipus. Only a few very high-ranking Inka bureaucrats supposedly knew how to make these knots.
Inka khipu with human hair was carbon dated to the Inka Empire, around 1480AD. Isotopic sampling of the human hair on the Inka khipu shows that the diet of the person who made the khipu was that of a commoner.
Professor Hyland said "Diet varied by status in the Inka Empire. Commoners ate a diet of potatoes, legumes, and quinoa grasses. Elites ate meat and drank large quantities of maize beer. Results intimate that who made these Inka khipu had little meat or maize in their diet - the evidence indicate that they were a commoner. This suggests that khipu literacy was more widespread and inclusive in the Inka Empire. In turn, this means that there was probably greater continuity between Inka khipus and modern ethnographic khipus, like the ones in Jucul, than previously thought."
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