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Unravelling the knotty khipu code
by David Catchpoole
When I first heard pioneer creationist Professor Arthur
Wilder-Smith (1915–1995) use the example of knots spaced along a rope according to
a certain code (e.g. Morse) to explain, simply, how information is stored on DNA,1 I
thought it was a clumsy analogy. Who would ever think that a knotted rope could contain
coded information?
Shortly after that, I happened across a dictionary entry2
showing that someone had indeed not only already thought of it—long before
Professor Wilder-Smith—but had also put the idea into practice. Who? The Incas of
South America! They stored information in the form of elaborate knotted strings known as
khipu (or ‘quipu’—Quechua word meaning ‘knot’).
Science historian Leland Locke worked out in the 1920s that the khipu were not merely
decorative—he showed they functioned as a kind of textile abacus, their knots used
to store calculations.3,4
But Locke’s breakthrough did not decode all of the
estimated 600 khipu which survived the Spanish conquest. In recent decades, it became
increasingly evident that many of the khipu were ‘clearly nonnumerical’, with
some researchers suggesting that the Incan knotted strings may have been a written
language.4,5
And now Harvard University’s Gary Urton, Professor
of Precolumbian Studies, has identified that the Incas stored information in the khipu
according to a complex binary code, more than 500 years before modern computers were
invented.
The six binary choices include the direction of the knot
(forward or reverse), the spin and ply of the string, the type of material (cotton or
wool), and so on. With 24 string colours to choose from, each knot could encode one of
1,536 (i.e. 24 x 26) possible ‘information units’. This is
somewhat more than the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Sumerian cuneiform symbols and more than
twice the number of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs.
But at this stage Urton still has not yet completely
cracked the khipu code. To do that would require the discovery of a document in a known
language matched to a khipu. That is, something similar to the ‘Rosetta
stone’, which enabled Egyptian hieroglyphics to be deciphered.4,6
In the meantime, he is using 21st-century
technology to search for common patterns in the knotted cords in an attempt to uncover
further information stored in the khipu code.
The Incas stored information in the khipu according to a complex binary code, more than 500 years before modern computers were invented.
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When Urton discovered ‘three khipu that share part
of the information’, he explained that: ‘This is pretty strong evidence that
they were not made by single people. On the contrary, there was a shared
code.’5
This evidence of sharing of a sophisticated and
mathematically complex code by the Incas makes a mockery of ideas that early people were
‘primitive’ and unsophisticated.
Instead, the Incas obviously had a highly integrated and
functioning civilization, and were clearly highly intelligent and inventive—as
evidenced by their ingenious khipu.
But in fact, the sophisticated storing of information on
segments of threaded strands according to a certain code already existed before
the Incas invented the khipu.
For the principle was embedded into their very own genes
… strands of DNA which had successfully carried the information to build the entire
human body, from generation to generation, ever since the creation of the first man and
woman.7 So God thought of it first!
And if anyone reading this should doubt that God exists,
consider this: code systems have only ever come from intelligence. Matter, by itself,
never produces a code.
As the khipu code is an indicator of its inventors’
intelligence, so the DNA code is an indicator of its Inventor’s
intelligence—far more information-rich than the khipu, DNA could never have arisen
from matter by itself. And the information embedded in DNA had to come from
somewhere.8
In the beginning, there had to be information. In
the beginning, there had to be intelligence. In the beginning, God
…
References and notes
- See also Wilder-Smith, A.E., The scientific alternative to neo-Darwinian
evolutionary theory, TWFT Publishers, California, USA, pp. 74–75, 1987, which
mentions the Inca code. Return to text
- Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of the English Language, International
Edition, Funk & Wagnalls, Vol. II, p. 1036, New York, USA, 1968. Return to text
- What is a khipu?
<www.anthropology.wisc.edu/chaysimire/titulo2/khipus/what.htm>, 28 August 2003. Return to text
- Mann, C.C., Cracking the Khipu Code, Science 300(5626):1650–1651,
2003. Return to text
- Lorenzi, R., Inca written language hidden in code? Discovery Channel,
<dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030630/inca_print.html>, 29 July 2003. Return to text
- The Rosetta stone contained Greek (in demotic and ordinary scripts) as well as Egyptian hieroglyphics—this allowed J.F. Champollion to decipher the latter in 1822. Return to text
- See Sarfati, J., DNA: marvellous
message or mostly mess? Creation 25(2):26–31, 2003. Return to text
- Gitt, W., In the Beginning was Information, CLV—Christliche Literatur-Verbreitung e.V., Bielefeld, Germany, 1997. Return to text
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