MIT Khipu Research Group

The mystery:

The Inka Empire (1438–1533) had its own spoken language, Quechua, which is spoken today by about 10 million people including a third of the Peruvian population. It is believed that the only “written” language of the Inka Empire is a system of different knots tied in ropes that are attached to a longer cord. This system is called khipu or quipu. The ropes also have different colors, ply, and attachments, providing additional mechanics for encoding information. There is evidence from the Spanish crusades that khipus encoded census data as well as stories. However, no one knows how to decode either kind of information. There are several hundred khipus in the world today, waiting to be read.

The challenge:

Our research group is trying to break the khipu code: how did the Inkas record language with knots in rope? By combining computation, informatics, mathematics, linguistics, and anthropology, we hope to uncover the khipu mystery.

IAP class:

In January 2007, we ran an IAP class on Knot Language: Recreating Inca Quipu/Khipu, from which this research group was formed.
Videos of some of the lectures will be available here soon.

The group:

Our research group consists of students and faculty from a diverse range of fields and universities:

Faculty:

Samuel Blank mathematics Northeastern U.

Carrie Brezine archaeology Harvard

Erik Demaine (cohead) computer science MIT

Martin Demaine (cohead) computer science MIT

Stefan Langerman computer science Free U. Brussels, Belgium

Jean-Jacques Quisquater electrical engineering Catholic U. Louvain, Belgium

Gary Urton archaeology Harvard

Students and postdocs:

Kunal Agrawal computer science MIT

Scott Ananian computer science MIT

Nyls Braak computer science MIT

Edwin Chen mathematics MIT

Suzanne Dermine computer science Catholic U. Louvain, Belgium

Maria Guirguis computer science MIT

Andrew Hamilton archaeology Harvard

Ben Horn highschool student Commonwealth School

J.C. Howard learning and memory MIT

Kalvin Kao bioengineering MIT

Essie Martsinkovsky human development U. Chicago

Melinda Medlock sophomore MIT

Aviv Ovadya computer science MIT

Mihai Pătraşcu computer science MIT

Christophe Petit computer science Catholic U. Louvain, Belgium

Conor Quinn linguistics MIT

Eran Tromer computer science MIT

Yulan Qing mathematics MIT

Olaf Witkowski computer science Catholic U. Louvain, Belgium

Group members only:

We maintain a password-protected wiki for sharing information within the group.

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