https://lithub.com/how-the-inca-used-knots-to-tell-stories/
If this is the extent of the quipu material in this book, it's probably not quite for me, though the broader subject is very interesting. Other direct sources may be more illustrative for me.
Harvard’s Gary Urton, with his Khipu Database (KDB), seems to have pinpointed the name of a village, Puruchuco, represented by a sequence of three numbers, like a kind of zip code. We can’t rule out the possibility that this is a richly phonetic system, but we’re still a long way from proving it.
Quipu may potentially be a phonetic system, but the state of the art of research indicates we're far from a proof. Several digital catalogues have been created including Gary Urton's Khipu Database (KDB).
To fully understand quipu, we must shed our preconceived notions of what defines writing.
We need to get rid of conceived notions of what constitutes writing to be able to better understand quipu.
The Inca left behind a three-dimensional system, a 3D “script.”
Silvia Ferrara analogizes the quipu to a three-dimensional "script".
́herange of storage media operative in different historical contexts includesthe marked stone tokenW the clay tabletW the knotted cord or quipuW the paX
pyrus scroll and the sheet of parchment.
Which others is she missing from a mnemonics perspective? I'm impressed that she indicates the khipu, but there are certainly other indigenous methods from oral cultures.
Ancient peoples frequently engaged in offloading their mental contents and augmenting their brainpower with external resources, as evidenced by objects they left behind. Sumerians employed clay tokens to keep track of livestock and other goods when trading; Incas tied knots in long cords, called quipus, to memorialize events; administrators and merchants across a broad swath of the ancient world used abacuses and counting boards.
Interesting to see these examples of mnemonic devices referenced here.
One could certainly add standing stones, stone circles, etc. to the list.
Medrano worked with Urton over the next several months and the two compiled their findings into a paper which will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Ethnohistory in January.
Journal article: https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article-abstract/65/1/1/133085/Toward-the-Decipherment-of-a-Set-of-Mid-Colonial
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/khipus-inca-empire-harvard-university-colonialism
Student shows correlation between string colors and names as well as tie location to social status.