On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Pete Turnbull wrote: Actually, I do. I did a paper on the Quipu for a history course I took in Peru in the summer of '99 and it's been a low-bandwidth pet research project of mine ever since. I gave a talk based on my Quipu paper at VCF Europa and exhibited the Quipu I constructed while in Peru. The quipu structure was decoded during the first quarter of this century by Leland Locke. His book _The Ancient Quipu_ (1923) explains how the data on the Quipu is encoded. A husband & wife team, Marcia & Robert Ascher, published _Code of the Quipu_ in 1981 which expands on Locke's work. Numbers are encoded on the strings in decimal (base 10) format. No knots represent zero (that the Inca's understood the concept of zero is significant). The color of the strings was also significant, most likely representing categories of data. The problem is that no one knows just what the numbers represent on the quipus known to exist since the context has long been lost and the dumb Conquistadors basically destroyed any evidence of the Inca civilization that might have shed some light on it. I could go into way more detail but right now I am extremely tired so if anyone is truly interested I will be happy to explain more, and also shoot you a copy of the paper I did which is a good overview. Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... Coming soon: VCF 4.0! VCF East: Planning in Progress See http://www.vintage.org for details!