Unraveling the Secrets of the Inca Empire
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For hundreds of years, Andean people recorded information by tying knots into long cords. Will we ever be able to read them?
By Sam Kean
Photographs by Musuk Nolte and Murray Orr
May 26, 2025
The heaps of khipus emerged from garbage bags in the back of the tiny, one-room museum—clumps of tangled ropes the size of beach balls. Sabine Hyland smiled as she gazed down at them and said, “Qué lindo, qué lindo”: how beautiful. Hyland, an anthropologist, had traveled here to the remote mountain village of Jucul in the Peruvian Andes to study them, in the hope of unlocking one of the most important lost writing systems in history, that of the Inca empire.
Instead of writing on clay tablets or papyrus, as other ancient societies did, the Incas recorded information by tying knots into long cords they called khipus. Only a few Andean villages have preserved their khipus through the centuries; those that have survived are revered, and village elders have sometimes kept their existence secret even from other community members. Yet beyond scraps of lore, most villagers have no idea what their khipus say: Knowledge of how to read them has all but vanished in the 500 years since the Spanish conquered and destroyed the Inca empire in the 1500s.
Jucul sits at an altitude of 11,800 feet, six hours north of Lima on axle-rattling mountain roads. The village is surrounded by green-brown slopes streaked with rocks, like waterfalls frozen in place. Most of its roughly 150 inhabitants live in mud-brick homes with tin roofs, and dogs roam freely. The gradients are steep; you can walk one block and ascend two stories. Nearly everyone wears a Stetson or sun hat or ball cap—L.A. Lakers, Miami Heat, KEEP AMERICA GREAT.
The people of Jucul kept their khipus locked away for centuries; Hyland and I were among the first outsiders ever to see them. New khipus rarely turn up anywhere in the Andes, so these cords could amount to a major breakthrough for Hyland, a professor at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland.
Although some scholars doubt that they’ll ever be able to read khipus fully, even a partial reading of the undeciphered cords would help illuminate the history of the Andean people who began recording information on them more than a millennium ago. Hyland has already published a proposed decoding of a few syllables on khipus from other villages. If the Jucul ones provide additional clues, she and her colleagues might one day be able to use them to crack open the lost history of the Inca empire, which was, at its peak, the largest civilization in the Americas.
More:
https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/05/decoding-ancient-incas-writing-system-khipus/682814/#google_vignette