Locke, however, missed many subtleties in the khipus, which could make them a richer tool for communication, said Urton, whose research was described in a recent issue of the journal Science, and whose new book is called Signs of the Inka Khipu.
The attention to khipus has its roots in insights from Marcia and Robert Ascher, a husband-and-wife team who began an extensive survey and analysis of khipus in 1968, and on the observations of Bill Conklin, a textile specialist at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, who noticed that khipus were spun and tied in surprisingly complex and varied ways.
Urton is proposing a system for tackling the meaning of the knots. Each knot, Urton suggests, can be thought of as a series of decisions, such as whether to make it of cotton or wool, to tie the knot with a crossing string that begins in the upper left or the upper right, and to use string that is spun clockwise or counterclockwise.
Not all scholars are persuaded by Urton's ideas.
"I don't see that this proposal arises from the actuality of the khipus," said Marcia Ascher, an emerita professor of mathematics at Ithaca College. "I don't see it being shown to fit or explain any of them."
Using money from the National Science Foundation, Urton has undertaken a comprehensive project to record as many khipus as possible in great detail, including the binary information he says could be so important. He hopes to place it all in a single computer database and give access to other scholars and the public in the hopes that somebody will see ways to crack the code. He is being helped by Carrie Brezine, a weaver and database specialist who did her undergraduate thesis in mathematics.
Last week, Brezine brought in a printout of transcriptions taken from khipus found recently in a cave overlooking the Lake of the Condors in northern Peru. As he sat in his office, surrounded by Andean textiles, he noticed long strings of numbers that were virtually identical on three of the khipus -- an indication that information was being copied from one to another, the way medieval scribes copied books by hand.
"It was one of those eureka moments," he said with a boyish grin. "This is really cool."
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