Khipu: The Knotted Cords That Kept Accounts and Memory in the Andes

With cords and knots, the peoples of the Andes kept exact accounts of people, tribute, and storehouses, and kept memory too. We listen, slowly, to how a khipu worked, who read khipus in the Inka world and under colonial rule, and what remains unknown.

From a knot system with its own zero to the storehouses of Inkawasi; from the account a lord of Jauja showed Cieza to the evening in 1581 when khipukamayuq told a colonial official that night had fallen; from confessions made with cords to the community of Tupicocha, in Huarochirí, which still brings out its khipus at its yearly assembly.