PDF Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records By Gary Urton
Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records
In an age when computers process immense amounts of information by the manipulation of sequences of 1s and 0s, it remains a frustrating mystery how prehistoric Inka recordkeepers encoded a tremendous variety and quantity of data using only knotted and dyed strings. Yet the comparison between computers and khipu may hold an important clue to deciphering the Inka records. In this book, Gary Urton sets forth a pathbreaking theory that the manipulation of fibers in the construction of khipu created physical features that constitute binary-coded sequences which store units of information in a system of binary recordkeeping that was used throughout the Inka empire.Urton begins his theory with the making of khipu, showing how at each step of the process binary, either/or choices were made. He then investigates the symbolic components of the binary coding system, the amount of information that could have been encoded, procedures that may have been used for reading the khipu, the nature of
Product details: Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records
Author : Gary Urton
Pages : pages
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Language :
ISBN-10 : B003QHZ34M
ISBN-13 : 9780292773752

Comments
Post a Comment