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.

Accessibility