214 How Ancient America Wrote. 



and probably to the Mexicans, whose symbols of numeration seem to 

 have been derived from this source. Certainly they were known to 

 the neighbors of the Mexicans, the Tlascalans (under the name of 

 Nepohualtzitzin), to the Chilenians (as pron), and to the ancient 

 Purahas long before their subjugation by the Incas. Under the gov- 

 ernment of these princes, they became the sole official notation within 

 the empire of Tavantinsuya. The poet Ylyia, a favorite of the fourth 

 Inca, Mayta Capac (1126-1156), is credited with having reduced them 

 to an elaborate system.* ComjDosed of a number of woolen strings or 

 threads of different size and color, variously knotted, and intertwined 

 and fastened to a large base cord, who would not wonder that such 

 poor contrivances could be rendered profitable as a means of record ? 

 Still they served admirably this purpose, by allotting to each color, 

 and to the modes of intertwining the knots or of twisting the pendant 

 strings a particular signification. Even the succession of the threads 

 and the distance of the knots from the junction of the thread with the 

 mother cord varied the meaning. Red indicated war or soldiers; the 

 yellow, gold; the white, silver or peace; the green, maize (cereals). 

 Applied to numerals, a single knot meant ten ; two single knots, 

 twenty; a knot doubly intertwined, one hundred; triply, one thous- 

 and. The chief objects were always designated by the first thread, 

 the least important by the last. If the quippo treated of the inhabit- 

 ants, the first string alluded to the age over sixty, the second to those 

 over fifty, and the last to the infants ; if it treated of crops, the 

 threads referred successively to maize, wheat, peas, beans, and millet ; 

 if of arms, to lances, arrows, bows, javelins, war clubs, hatchets, and 

 slings. 



Thus this simple arrangement of knots and intertwinings, though 

 probably serving at first the mere purpose of numeration, became in the 

 course of time by an ingenious application to the various conditions, 

 phases and relations of life and government, a valuable substitute for 

 written documents and annals, and answered for the registering of 

 laws and decrees, of taxes and tributes, of marriages, deaths and 

 births, of armies and supplies, and for the chronicling of historical 

 events and statistical fiicts, yea even of religious ceremonies, festivals 

 and sacrifices. As biographical sketches, the quippos were buried 

 with the dead, and in our day numbers of them are still exhumed from 

 the huacas. 



But it was necessary for the reader to know two things in order to 

 interpret these mysterious memorials. Either signs had to be at- 



* H. Wuttke. " Origin of Writing," p. 181. 



