Incas Used Binary? 477
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.'"
Why are we so surprized? (Score:5, Insightful)
The more we learn, the more we forget. For example, who can tell me the best mix for bronze? Not many now. How about what's best to plant after sowing rye for two years? As we continue to move into a more technological society, there is quite a bit of knowledge we are losing. Remember the famous ancient battery?
I'd suggest that if we got off of our superiority high horse, we'd find that we've always been quite ingenious. 7-bit though, that's what I find interesting. Wonder where 7 bits comes from. 10 or 5 --that I'd understand. 7, perhaps someone who'd been in a terrible accident?!
7 bit binary CAN mean 1500 things (Score:0, Insightful)
Next time think before you say someone doesn't know what they are talking about and make yourself a fool.
Not unique (Score:5, Insightful)
The symbols provide an array of wisedom and advice for those who map them.
Oddly enough, Terence McKenna managed to calculate the end of the world to December 21, 2012 using I Ching, while the Incas (Or was it Mayas? I confuse them.) calculated it to the same date. - Behold the powers of binary.
Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:7 bits? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dont read it! (Score:3, Insightful)
And for those who'd like to understand the joke above
--- SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! ---
Snow Crash, in the book of that name, is a virus that infects programmers if they just look at a certain document.
Knots in strings are not the same thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Old news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Old news (Score:2, Insightful)
A cart will do you hardly any good in the Andes given the screwy terrain.
Anyway, thank the Incas for chocolate (and coffee too i believe).
Re:Why are we so surprized? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that 500 years ago, or a couple thousand years ago (in the bronze era) there were that many who would tell you the best mix for bronze.
While it is true that some arts are lost (dead languages, for example), still there are enough people who know the best mix for bronze or what to plant after rye. The thing is we don't need one such person per neighbourhood anymore since we can store and communicate information very easily.
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. That is, as long as we can read it - we are now surprised with the Incas' use of binary because their whole civilization is gone. If Incas lived, they could have been the origin of computers, once the technology was there.
Re:7 bits? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you have a code space of 24 times 2^7
The article is a bit fuzzy on this point as it mentions 24 times 2^6
In any way it is way less then your 39 bits....
If it was 32 colors (2^5) this would lead to a total of 2^(5+7)=4096 (or in the articles case 2^(5+6)=2048)) possibilities. Or 12 (or 11) bits.
Jeroen
Re:Why are we so surprized? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:5, 7, and 10 (Score:5, Insightful)
I he is right (Score:2, Insightful)
He failed to ignite a small stick, and sounded utterly unconvincing
While I know the babylonians had batteries and the Incas were well and truly advanced, there are nutters proposing all sorts of things. It probably IS a code - but perhaps one like the hanky code (only example I could think of sorry), where the colors signified entire concepts rather than some sort of grammar.
In summation: this guy could oh so easily be a wacko
Re:7 bits? (Score:2, Insightful)
Groups of 7 bits. All the knots in a group are the same colour.
Re:No wheel, though (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Time Zone is God in Anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
Think about it -- unless a single knot can be painted all twenty-four colours at once, there's no way you can turn all twenty-four bits "on". It's much more likely, given the limitations of painting on tiny knots, that a knot would be one and one color only, and that the article's math is thus correct
Re:Old news (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a pretty consistent observation that lots of cultures invented the wheel, but only those that had access to high quality draft animals used it. Remember that the horse and other draft animals (oxen, donkey, etc.) were extinct in the new world until (re)introduced by the Europeans in 1492.
A great book on the subject is Guns, Germs, Steel: The Fate of Human Societies by Jared Diamond [amazon.com]. Diamond argues that two dominant cultures have arisen - A Western culture that traces its roots to Fertile Crescent in modern day Iraq and the an Eastern culture that traces its roots to the Yellow River Valley. In both of these places nature and geography conspired to create a package of tools that allowed these cultures to spread.
Both these places had the following...
- Naturally occuring staple foods - usually grains - that were easy to domesticate
- Large wild animals that were easy to domesticate and useful as draft animals
- Room to spread out while using the same tools
In contrast, the natives of the Americas had only a single staple grain - corn - and that one took thousands of years longer than wheat, barley, oats, and rice to domesticate and they had no draft animals. As an added gotcha, when the American natives did manage to domesticate corn, there were barriers to spreading out. For instance, the people of Mexico - Aztec, Mayan, Toltec - would need to pack up and cross the American Southwestern deserts, then the great plains (which can't be farmed easily without steel plows), then the Appalachian mountains, before reaching readily farmable land in the Eastern USA. The Chinese and Middle Eastern peoples could spread all the way to Korea, India, North Africa, and Europe without hitting that much of a barrier.Re:Not unique (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an interesting perspective, because most European cultures believed similarly; except that more specificly than supernatural, the unfamiliar was considered demonic in nature (Surely God has revealed all that is good and pure to us in our sacred texts).
Re:Why are we so surprized? (Score:5, Insightful)
Missing Fingers? (Score:3, Insightful)
For a culture to have picked up a system of writing based on the first guy using it having lost a few digits... Stranger things have happened.
Re:Why are we so surprized? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean the Inca had a seven day week, from the same creation myth that we have?
Wow, spooky.
The nearest astronomical justification for a 7 day week would be 1/4 of a moon cycle, which may indeed be related to the true origins of the week, full moon - waning - new moon - waxing being natural divisions for a society basing its calendar on lunar observation.
Perhaps the inventors of Genesis merely fitted the creation myth to a pre-existing division.