Andean people of the past looked at these strings as a record of the climate, and they studied them to understand patterns.

Quito, the capital of Ecuador, was founded in the 16th century on the ruins of an Inca city and stands at an altitude of 2,850 m. Despite the 1917 earthquake, the city has the best-preserved, least ...

Up until the time of the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, Inca communities in the Andean highlands used a peculiar form ...

Lake Titicaca was a sacred space to the ancient Andean empire of the Inca, which at its height in the early 16th century controlled territory from modern-day Colombia to Chile. The Inca built more ...

Finally, how did the Inca Empire write things down, and who did the writing? It has been thought that ornate threads of strings and baubles known as khipu are how records were made for business ...

Ancient Stone Road From Atlantic Ocean To The Inca Capital Of Cusco Posted: May 28, 2025 | Last updated: May 28, 2025 Ancient Lost Worlds and Hidden History. On location videos made by author and ...

For hundreds of years, Andean people recorded information by tying knots into long cords. Will we ever be able to read them?

Only a few very high-ranking Inca bureaucrats supposedly knew how to make these knots. Inka khipu with human hair was carbon dated to the Inca Empire, around 1480AD. Isotopic sampling of the ...

The research, undertaken by Professor Sabine Hyland at the University of St. Andrews, reveals that the enigmatic form of communication, known as quipu (also written as khipu), helped record ...

The Atlantic has a fascinating deep dive into khipus — long cords that the Inca tied knots into to preserve information. Few know how to read the knots, which are hundreds of years old and fragile.