The Weirdest Language Of All Time Is FINALLY Being Deciphered

When the Spanish Conquistadors encountered the mighty Inca empire, they found thousands of knotted-up ropes called quipus. Encoded in these quipus were tax records, census data, and the entire history of the Inca empire. But the secret to these ancient computers have been lost to time. Today, scientists are trying to crack the unbreakable code in these strings and bring the history of this great empire back to life.

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
1:48 - The Rosetta Stone
5:47 - History of Quipus
7:11 - Tangent Cam
7:31 - Quipu Creation Date
9:18 - Professor Gary Urton and Manny Medrano
12:36 - How To Read A Quipu
19:14 - Sponsor - Incogni

[MomotheToothless]

I love how there's the universal human trait of recording information, but the WAY it is recorded is so varied across cultures.

[OlOleander]

When he got to texture conveying meaning, comparing it to Braille, it struck me how genius that is: quipu can convey information even if you are blind or deaf, discounting the colored strands for the former. The knots are spaced regularly and distinctly enough to read in the dark or the rain, silently. As elders slowly lose the use of their senses, they can still use the quipu until their hands can no longer make out the knots.

[sammarchant]

My wife is from Ayacucho Peru. Her first language is Quechua and my mother in law still only speaks Quechua. We plan on sending our daughter to live with her grandma for several months of the year until she can master it and keep it alive. It’s sad because speaking Quechua instead of Spanish is associated with being uneducated and unsophisticated so there really isn’t a push to keep it alive. Everyone that can tries to speak Spanish and forget Quechua.
Also, btw, the two different spellings are because the Spanish were trying to write down words in Quechua that have sounds that don’t exist in Spanish. Quechua has a sort of gutteral sounds that they often use a Q to represent, but there isn’t really a perfect way to spell it. My wife’s maiden name is Quispe which also uses that sound.

[sassulusmagnus]

Subtle differences in worldview are sometimes implicit in a language. In English one might say "You are a student." whereas in Gaelic the sentence would translate as something like "There is a student in you." The English suggests that you are one member of a larger category (students), whereas the Gaelic suggests that "student" is one aspect of the larger reality that is you. It's a subtle but powerful difference in perspective.

[gianella]

Im Peruvian and my grandpa was a historian he spend most of his life trying to understand quipus he wrote several books about it. It’s so exiting to know we are finally here 🇵🇪

[iesika]

As a fiber artist i can tell you something interesting about knots as records - when you unknot a previously knotted cord, you can easily see where the knots were. That’s built in tamper detection.

[NamelessFurry]

Hi, i'm a peruvian and i lived most of my life in pisac perú, alot of locals speak quechua and they actually teach it in some schools, not only that but if you're lucky, you can get "how to read a quipu" as a class asignment, but they only teach the numbers part, other than that, the locals are very welcoming and friendly

[bimblinghill]

What's surprising about how this was forgotten is that in much of the old Inca empire, a lot of the culture is still very much alive. I backpacked through Chile, Peru & Bolivia in 2005. Huge numbers of people still speak Quechua, wear the traditional clothes and attend religious and cultural ceremonies. I suppose quipu literacy was not widespread, so the conquistadors were able to snuff it out.

[jerotoro]

Written language has two main drivers: the need to enhance/expand our communication abilities, and the intrinsic desire to live forever and immortalize yourself in some form. Kinda sad that so many of those stories were casually destroyed like that.

[miserablepile]

Magnetic core memory was one of the earliest forms of digital information storage. It consisted of woven wires strung with lots of tiny donut shaped magnets which could be flipped into off and on states, they would stay in their encoded states after the system turned off. Kind of cyclic how an early recorded language used lengths of rope and knots while early digital records weren't too dissimilar!

[regrettablemuffin]

The idea that 6700 of our current 7000 languages are threatened is horrifying to me. I’ve been obsessed with languages since high school and one of the things that no one can really understand until they study a language to the point of fluency is that languages are not just a bunch of different words for the same thing. Every language is a different interpretation of the world. Every language has words that can’t be translated into other languages because that concept simply doesn’t exist outside of that language. Just think how many ideas and perspectives we will lose if those languages die out.

[AnOtterNamedMoMo]

If I'm not mistaken, the Spanish used the quipu and the Quipucamayocs to maintain records during the conquest. They had them directly translate the quipu into Spanish for their own documents that they held onto and used the quipu directly in the villages. And I'm fairly certain that they had portions of the bible translated by the Quipucamayocs and had them carried around because they resembled prayer rosaries. So we were aware that there are translations of them, but not necessarily how to translate them because the quipu that we needed were missing, destroyed, or were in the possession of museums but not realized for what they were.

[rhov-anion]

I remember first learning about Quipu in the 80s cartoon, "Mysterious Cities of Gold." They find a golden quipu, and the Inca girl Zia is the only one who can read it. The whole series was part history, part Native American anthropology, part science fiction (ornithopter, fusion reactors, Atlantis, all in the 1500s) and as a tiny child unable to even read yet, I loved the idea of a textile reading system.

[judilynn]

Interestingly, African slaves also used a type of "knot" system when braiding each other's hair. The different designs braided into the hair gave instructions for escape routes and other secret messages to be passed along. This video had me thinking about that.

[nestorjuandediosgomezrojas]

As a Peruvian I highly appreaciate this video and your content. It is sad that loads of information had been lost but it gives hope knowing that there are still intelectuals trying to decipher quipus.

[Hydde]

Impressive, the Inca's had multithreaded applications long before we did. Too bad everything had to be written in knot net, and the only date type you could effectively work with were strings.

[WingedAsarath]

I wish I'd learnt about Quipus when I was doing my linguistics degree. As you said, the implications on how we define "writing" are monumental. Its tragic when a language or writing system is lost like this.

[jenniferwintz]

Oh! I am a woman who hand spins with a drop spindle, mostly sheep wool, but I've tried other fibers. It's a visceral experience, and I am convinced that it is vital to the human experience. Some archeological evidence goes back over 30K years. A person versed in fibers can glean so much from a string, thread, or yarn. I've long followed the lore surrounding Quipu.

[ateneamaurtua]

I am from Peru. Thank you for making this video. You don't know how many times I've wanted to scrag some of my fellows because they try to deny that the Quipus are a writing system. Literally every time i hear that "our ancestors didn't have a writing system but were great either way" or that they were stupid because they didn't get to develop one, because yeah i heard that one too... i get mad, because it's simply most likely not true! Here everyone always says that the Quipus were only a counting and registering tool, no one ever divulgates that it was most probably also a writing system solely because it can't be translated yet. It's very annoying. Due to the will of certain people to be seen as factual and academic they don't talk about the writing system "theory" at all in museums and schools and most people don't know anything about it, even some university teachers apparently lack this information.

[Sean.Cordes]

Good video. Along with the Rosetta Stone, another critical ancient text that IS an absolute banger is the Behistun Inscription - written in Elamite, Akkadian, and Old Persian, which allowed scholars to translate the vast wealth of Akkadian tablets and other sources we have from Mesopotamia [along with [cuneiform] Elamite and Old Persian records of course].