Incas Used Binary?

Abhijeet Chavan writes "An article in the Independent reports that a leading scholar believes the Incas may have used a form of binary code 500 years before computers were invented. 'Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information...If Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language.'"

Dont read it!

[tjensor]

Neal Stephenson was right! Its Snow Crash!

Apaches used Hex?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever seen Hanna-Barberas Brave Starr? The bad dude's name was an indian named Tex-Mex of the Hexagon.. or something.

How advanced?

[m00nun1t]

I'd be *really* impressed if they had Duke Nukem 3.

I guess

[Daath]

That means that the Incas were a bit advanced! :P

Message ?

[EpsCylonB]

I reckon they were prolly trying to say one of three things (in order of likelyhood)...

1) first post !

2) All your base are belong to us

3) imagine a beowulf cluster of these things

Strings of cotton and wool

[ralico]

And if they washed and shrank them, would that have been data compression?

Re:I guess

[Linker3000]

Incnix? Incnux?

Re:Message ?

[peterpi]

Perhaps they were placing bets on how long FreeBSD would take to die.

Does that mean

[T40 Dude]

that the Incas OWN SCO ????

Poor Microsoft

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

So that's prior art to their 1's and 0's patent [theonion.com] then.

Re:Not unique

[tjensor]

So not only did they have binary - they had Oracle.

Thangyouverymuch I'll be here all week.

I'm confused

[LinuxParanoid]

Is it binary because it has NOTs, or binary because it has KNOTs?

Re:Strings of cotton and wool

[tizzyD]

Very funny. LOL? But then, if I crinkle the strings, would that be encryption? Or just plain obfuscation?

Legal Implications

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful translation of this newly-discovered encoding could reveal large sections of unix code, possibly with comments and the real original copyright notices intact, thus putting an end to the debate and sending SCO back where they came from.

In addition, this might represent prior art for various data storage systems. Don't think IBM is out of the woods yet, with this prior art to look over.

You're new here...

[Gothmolly]

This is Slashdot, don't read the articles!!!

Wow! 24-bit colour, 500 years ago...

[jkrise]

And I had to wait till 1993 for the SGI Indigo2 24-bit graphics card, and pay $3,000 for that one!

Re:Does that mean

[Surak]

No. It means that the Incas invented the Internet, but I think that Al Gore invented the Incas, who in turn created the Internet. The SCO came along and they claim that they invented Al Gore. I don't get it either, don't worry.

Re:7 bits? - read the article ! it was emacs.

[Anonymous Coward]

for a short info:
it was seven binary choices the maker could make,
like type of cord, spin direction, etc, times 24 colours, which equals a 2^6*24, similar in construction to common IEEE float data type.
you have 7 digits for the information, and a not fully used 5 digit binary for selection of "ctrl-shift-meta-alt-cokebottle" modifiers.

basically: incas invented the earlies EMACS :-)

So instead of"one" and "zero"...

[Anonymous Coward]

... it should be "naught" and "knot"?

Re:7 bits?

[nniillss]

Then it is not binary (but instead some 25-system if the possibilities are nothing or one of 24 colors). An archeologist trying to be a mathematician is apparently worse than vice versa.

prior art?

[the uNF cola]

Heh, let's see someone patent binary now. This must be the the most prior-art, that prior art can get...

So Lemme Get this straight

[Evets]

We use binary code to be able to display strings in 24 bit color and they use strings in 24 colors to display binary code. The circle is complete.

Re:5, 7, and 10

[Glamdrlng]

5 and 10 are natural numbers because we have ten fingers, ten toes, etc. I see two possibilities: 1. The guy who invented this numbering system lost three fingers during an accident involving a rope, a pully, and a large block of sun-dried mud-brick. 2. The aliens who taught it to the Incas had seven fingers.

Phew.... The incas had 1's and 0's??????

[javiercero]

Nah, When I was growing up, we only had 0's... them Incas had it so easy.... That's right we only had unary, and we did not complain. Oh, and we had to walk uphill through the rain forrest in the snow to reach the pyramid, and it was uphill both ways... and we had no shoes.

There, them Incas what a bunch of pussies!!!!

Re:7 bit binary CAN mean 1500 things

[jorgen]

Dude, how do you represent every word in the english language using only 1 (one) 7-bit character?

SCO sues Gary Urton, Harvard University

[McCall]

In other news, SCO is suing Harvard University for $1 Billion, for patent infringement.

A spokesperson for SCO said "One of the khipu contains binary representation of UNIX code, we can't tell you which khipu it is, but anyone who has read, heard or mentioned the Inca civilisation owes us money, and we will be seeking damages."

A spokesperson for the Inca civilisation was unable to comment due to being mummified.

The Incas did not have DN3, but...

[Prince_Ali]

The Mayan calendar is counting down to the release of Duke Nukem Forever!

Database structures

[panurge]

Strings hanging off strings hanging off strings? Surely a relational database? It's just as well Codd died before learning that the Incas beat him to 3NF by 500 years.

Now, can I interest the client for the db I'm working on in having it converted to Quipu? Should be good for a few trips to South America...

Re:7 bits?

[myster0n]

That seventh bit must have been for the evil bit. Those guys were way ahead of their time !

Grannie's First Program

[Jawju]

I've got a god-awful knitted jumper from my gran which I swear is an attempt at the 'Hello World' program. If I get kitted up in everything she's ever gave me, I'd be a walking Beowulf cluster, and how long would it be before SCO pointed at my socks and filed a lawsuit?

Scourge of the Inca

[Zapdos]

and what eventually caused their fall was the khipu Century Copy-Knot Act.

7 bits

[turgid]

Don't you know that these guys cross-bred with the aliens! That's where they got 7 fingers from and hence 7-bit binary. The binary codes were calculations of landing and take-off trajectories for the flying-saucers. There's even one where they factor in the mass of Jesus as one of the passengers.

Re:Grannie's First Program

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they SOCKS4 or SOCKS5?

ANSI

[Anonymous Coward]

They have invented to low ASCII code (7 bits) and color coded them ? Wow these guys had an ANSI terminal 500 years ago !

That's all well and good,

[Vengeance]

But it took the ancient Italians to invent spaghetti code!

Prior art?

[CausticPuppy]

Does this count as prior art? Somebody better tell microsoft [theonion.com]...

Re:Why are we so surprized?

[dzerkel]

Bill Gatezaqql sez, "No one will ever need to count more than 127 of anything..."

Re:Dont read it!

[more fool you]

Snow Crash, in the book of that name, is a virus that infects programmers if they just look at a certain document.

You mean like an NDA?

Re:Message ?

[syle]

Actually, the message has already been partially deciphered, but experts are unable to find a meaningful connection between the translated phrases, "hot grits," "natalie portman," and "petrified."

Re:Story mirror - site slashdotted :(

[Tomun]

The original hieroglyphs, dating from about 5,000 years ago, were etched on stone and were elaborate and time-consuming to fuck,

Painful too I'd imagine.

Re:Not unique

[chrisbtoo]

"According to occult scientist Terence McKenna, the end of the world as we know it will occur at 11:10 PM, December 22, 2012[...]"

Which timezone was that, again? Or are we expecting the world to end in 24 arbitrarily defined chunks throughout the day?

Re:Not unique

[Dstrct0]

We need a "+1 Spooky" moderation option

Khipu Processors

[hashwolf]

It interesting to note that the khipu is only the medium for storing the data.

It would be even more interesting if a 'khipu processor' was found. By khipu processor I mean something you feed the knots to, to get work done.

Of course it might be argued that lamas can still up to this day 'process' kiphus and get work done, but that's not exactly what I mean.

Also if such a thing existed it's speed would be measured in knots per second, Mega knots per second, Giga knots per second, BogoKnots?
What about a knot co processor or multi knot threading?

Maybe knot, but what do I know?

I agree too

[dnoyeb]

The funny thing I always see is movies about prehistoric man.

They always show them sloutched over, dirty as hell, grunting like idiots. Basically while they claim this prehistoric man was the smartest animal on the planet, they show him as the dumbest. every other animal I know washes his ass. You can NOT be making a spear and still can't wash your ass.

There are 10 types of NativeAmerican civilizations

[positive]

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

What Time Zone is God in Anyway?

[FreeUser]

"According to occult scientist Terence McKenna, the end of the world as we know it will occur at 11:10 PM, December 22, 2012"

Is that Eastern, Central, Mountain, or Pacific Time?

Or is God in another timezone altogether ... like Greenwich or MET? ...and how many people, in and out of the White House, will work full time trying to make the apocolypse happen on schedule? Prophecies, despite being nonsensical, have a way of becoming self-fullfilling once enough gullable people buy into them, and enough of those gullible people ascend to positions of power where they can actually make it happen (with or without their brother in Florida helping out).

7-bits, not so strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's quite fascinating. I believe the Book of Mormon, and since they would be descendants of the Book of Mormon peoples, that would mean that they inherit much knowledge from the ancient Israelites and Jews. Consequently, 7 would start to gain more credence having to do with perfection. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Thought provoking. Perhaps we should take some looks further back to see where this may have come from or how they derived this system. Perhaps we are overlooking some things from the Mayans or those before.

Re:Why are we so surprized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iranian batteries? Incan binary systems? I think it is obvious what has happened: rogue time travellers have begun polluting our timestream.

Re:Artificial Al Gore

[HutchGeek]

No no, SCO didnt invent Al Gore.... They cloned him from a bone found in an Inca excavation dig. That way they figure since they thereby "own" Al Gore - the newest Inca - they cricumnavigate the patent the Inca's filed 500 years ago on alternative information representation systems by using encoding technology.

Re:Why are we so surprized?

[quantum bit]

In fact, even if we suddently stop using bronze and the current makers slowly die leaving no successors, we may still be able to recreate bronze because the best mix is recorded somewhere.

Yeah, but it's probably covered under the latest copyright extensions, so the corporation that owns the bronze copyright (even though they're not producing any bonze themselves) will sue the pants off anybody who tries to make any.

Re:Message ?

[orasio]

3) imagine a beowulf cluster of these things

We have those.
We call them sweaters.

Re:I guess

[sharkey]

Incnix? Incnux?

Well, we know it wasn't Incdows. The Incas were MUCH more advanced.

So the Incas can claim prior art on binary?

[Idimmu Xul]

Was it Big Indian or Little Indian? BOOM BOOM!

On a slightly more serious note, wasnt one of the Endians patented, which resulted in the creation of the other Endian (or so said my lecturer) and if so, does this affect things now? Or did the patent expire ages ago anyway?

Re:I agree too

[sharkey]

They always show them sloutched over, dirty as hell, grunting like idiots.

Wrong channel. That's Ron Jeremy.

Re:I guess

[notque]

Incnix? Incnux?

Don't you mean GNU/Incnix?

Re:Does that mean

[anno1a]

Nono, you got it all wrong.
Al Gore invented the Incas, the Incas invented the Internet, SCO bought Al Gore and now claims they own the Internet.

Colours?

[Hittite Creosote]

Maybe they just liked to add colours

So these Incas were like your average businessmen with a powerpoint presentations then?