Because khipu were so vital to the Inca government, and because the khipu itself is such a sophisticated way of recording numbers, colonial writers decided that these tools must be the exclusive knowledge of a very specialized, elite class of bureaucrats. But a recent study, analyzing hair from a khipu made around 1498 CE, suggests that even common folk had a good grasp of this intricate way of recording numbers.
University of St. Andrews archaeologist Sabine Hyland and her colleagues recently analyzed a stand of hair from a 500-year-old khipu—one they expected to be the handiwork of an especially high-ranking member of the Inca empire, based on how beautifully it was crafted.
“It’s very fine and has subtle embellishments, like decorative braiding on the ends of some pendants. I wondered if this was from a very high-status person indeed,” Hyland told Ars. “It was [a] surprise when we got the results back, and it showed that this person had the diet of a commoner.”
The threads that made up the khipu’s knotted strands had come from a camelid (probably an alpaca or llama), but those strands hung from a cord of human hair: a 104-centimeter-long set of locks, folded in half and twisted into a sturdy cord. Almost certainly, the person who made the khipu intended their hair to serve as a deeply personal signature for their work. For the Inca, hair contained a person’s spiritual essence; it also happens to contain a chemical record that can shed light on what they ate and where they lived.