Inca Knots Calculate Math and Tell Stories
Students in Celsa Rutan’s art class recently visited the Museo de las Americas for a workshop on the Inca Quipu System. A quipu is made up of one or many cords from llama or alpaca hair with knots to represent numeric values or possibly to aid storytellers remembering their tales. The indigenous Incas in South America used them for math calculations, calendars and recording history. A quipu might have a few cords or close to two thousand.
The students learned the history of the quipu and then made their own, telling their life history and life events through the knots.
