Threads That Speak: How The Inca Used Strings to Communicate | National Geographic

[Music] [Music] when you work with archaeological objects you are like entering the world of your ancestors I like to think that in a way they talk to us aipo is an accounting device made of cotton strings that used Nots to represent numbers aipu is the accountant of Life the Kus were made in Inca Times by kuk kamay the kibuka maok the only ones who be and didn't pass the knowledge to the next Generations there's a lot of questions still to get answered my biggest hope for inkawasi is to be able to excavate all the site the Kus are very well preserved because the environment of the Peruvian coast is very arid so you have a very good preservation of any organic remain this must be 600 years old and you can see the preservation is very well we know that the numbers we found in the Kus are the counts of these products they have been buried for 600 years and so what we do is the conservation that means keep them a a clean and straight so the analyzer can come and study them I think this discovery will bring a and also in how the Incas Dominate and control these local populations many people say that because we had no writing no our culture was not developed no but we really have things like k showed that it was a very developed culture every time is exciting because we we are finding them in different contexts and in different situations and different sizes different shapes colors Nots so we can have a very big data of these people so we can compare them and get any kind of insight to see how to read them or how to understand [Music] them the first one when you see them like really dir a spaghetti and then at the end no they're just like take me a picture no they're so pretty I think the Kus are grateful