Physical properties of khipus do not by themselves bear centrally on the question of whether khipu could have encoded linguistic sound-segments and thereby entered the sacred circle of ‘true writings’. Khipu materiality does, however, suggest that the medium was exceptionally strong in representing relations other than linguistic ones. The technology has an inherent bent toward emphasizing discrete category, hierarchy, number and grouping. One cannot create a canonical khipu without implications about some of these. It also seems to have been inherently strong for usage as an operational simulating device. Khipu would be as good for representing ongoing updates or rearrangements of information as it is for permanent fixation.
Khipus’ physicality compels us to pay special attention to category and number, the same variables Damerow (1999) identified as the core of meaning in Proto-Cuneiform. A canonical khipu has some resemblance to the rationing tables, rich in both semasiograms and numerals, which Damerow deciphered. However the term ‘proto’ misleads one into thinking that inscription built up from noun-number inscription has an inherently low functional horizon. Perhaps the khipu art represented ‘proto’ inscription carried onward toward elaborateness in its own terms, rather than redirected to phonographic representation via the rebus mutation. One way to combine the now well-developed mathematical study of khipus with newer findings about color, mirror- symmetry variations, and hierarchical structure would be to think of khipus as a script which is inherently a diagram.
The philosopher Nelson Goodman, in studying the properties of different semiotic toolkits, invented a special usage of the word model which seems to capture very well the peculiar relation between matter and meaning in khipus. “Models...in effect diagrams...in more than two dimen- sions, and with working parts; or in other words, diagrams are flat and static models. Like other diagrams, models may be digital or analog or mixed” (Goodman 1976 [1968]: 172–173). One can think of Andean societies, especially but not only Inka-era ones, as engaged in constructing themselves by storing, updating, and exchanging visual models rather than verbal transcriptions. Whether or not that is ‘writing’ does not need to be fought about immediately. What does matter is learning to recognize “graphical excellence” (Tufte 1983: 182) in its less familiar forms.
