Mathematics of the Incas by Ascher Marcia; Ascher Robert; & Robert Ascher

Author:Ascher, Marcia; Ascher, Robert; & Robert Ascher [Ascher, Marcia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1909588
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chroniclers who followed Cieza in time add to the list of contexts in which quipus were apparently used, Cristóbal de Molina writes about quipus and calendrics, Garcilaso de Vega adds the context of law, and Bernabé Cobo links quipus with peace negotiations. These three and others, for example, José de Acosta and Polo de Ondegardo, echo Cieza’s statement connecting quipus and oral history. At least one thing can be concluded from what Cieza and others wrote: given the varied contexts in which quipus were used, they must have been the realization of a very general recording system.

It is easier to guess how the quipumaker might record a census, tribute, and the like, than it is to imagine how he might record oral history. There is no contradiction in the notion of a record of oral history: if history was sung, as in a ballad, the transmission was oral even if a record was made, just as the musical accompaniment for a ballad is not the ballad itself. But what do numbers have to do with oral history? Remember that numbers can be used to express quantities or as labels. In oral history, they were probably used both ways.

Used as labels, numbers could have served to mark a series of the same or closely related phases. Repetitions of a phrase, later followed by repetitions of a different phrase, or a return to an earlier phrase, are distinctive of the literature of peoples who transmit their tradition orally. Take, for example, a narrative from the native African state of Burundi. The narrative is about a king and his diviner who set out to overthrow another king. There are ten episodes, A–J. The first episode (A) is followed by three episodes (BCD). The starting phases of D repeat, with slight variation, the start of C; and the start of C is a repeat, with slight variation, of the starting phases of B . The story continues with a middle episode E; there is another set of repeats (FGHI) with the pattern shown below, and the narrative concludes with episode J. That is,

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