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On Thu, 26 May 2005, John Foust wrote: Actually, they are a really good example! The point about them is their use was fully embedded in some local culture. The medium, the content, the context, nearly everything is gone. Whatever the use was, we don't need the technology; we have nice nylon rope, thank you. The cultural embedment is what is interesting. If tomorrow morning a quipo rosetta stone were found, I doubt it would make all that much difference. Even if it became known that quipo were harvest/hunt/marriage/etc demo data, there's not enough accompanying contextual data (date? season? year? owner? gender? farmer? king?) to render the content very meaningful. The approximate technological implementation and interface (eg. knots) are important; reading it seems less so. Quipos had meaning (presumably) only within their local culture. So will ZORK and everything else.