A world of
knowledge.
Tied together.
Meet the khipu: an Andean system of knotted cords. Explore the stories, mathematics, and possibilities held in its threads.
Follow the threadExplore the knots below ↓
More than a knot.
Before a written page, a different kind of record.
Discover how information can live in a cord.
What is a khipu?
A khipu, or quipu, means “knot” in Quechua. It is a three-dimensional, textile-based system for recording information through cords, colors, groupings, and knots.
Made from cotton or camelid fibers, khipus were used by the Wari from the ninth century and became widely used in the Inka civilization during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Records you could hold.
Khipu keepers, or quipucamayocs, made, read, and interpreted these records. They tracked taxation, labor, production, and population. Colonial accounts also connect khipus with genealogy, laws, and historical events.
Numerical conventions are better understood than narrative meanings. Much remains open to investigation.
A single unit, a larger place.
Simple knots can indicate units in higher decimal positions, such as tens or hundreds. Position along the pendant cord helps determine their value.
Tie a date into a khipu.
Learn with today’s date. Then use three cords and place value to record a date of your own.
Read the cords, one position at a time.
Month is blue, day is orange, and year is green. Read from thousands at the top to units at the bottom. Select a knot group to explore its value.
Build your own date.
Choose your birthday, or use an invented date. The knots stay blank until you build them. Your date stays in this page’s memory and is not saved or sent.
Choose a knot group.
Select a cell in the table to connect its knots with a decimal position.
Three ways in.
A thousand threads to follow.
Step into the project’s digital experiences. Explore an immersive space, ask questions, or follow a learning challenge.
Khipu Hub
An immersive platform exploring khipus through extended reality technologies.
↗Khipu GPT
A customized GPT supporting questions, exploration, and engagement with khipu studies.
↗Scavenger Hunt
A personalized learning experience to help you find your way through Khipu Hub.
↗Old questions.
New possibilities.
Khipu Hub brings digital humanities, immersive technologies, and cultural learning into conversation. Its purpose is to widen participation in the exploration of Andean record-keeping.
Why a digital Khipu Hub?
The source project cites more than 1,386 khipus across 143 museums and private collections in over 20 countries, as reported by Medrano in 2021. Access to these objects remains uneven. Digital environments offer another entry point for learners who cannot visit collections in person.
Learning through experience
The project explores immersive and generative technologies as ways to engage with the material complexity of khipus. Its ambition is a digital collection and contextual learning environments that support active exploration.
What are the limitations?
The Hub’s simplified models introduce imperial Inka artifacts to general audiences. Accurate reconstructions require coordinated access to museum collections. The effectiveness of the Hub and GPT in deepening cultural learning remains a question for future evaluation.
Reading & source notes
Selected sources from the Canva project:
- Mann, C. C. (2003). “Cracking the Khipu Code.” Science, 300(5626), 1650–1651.
- Medrano, M. (2021). Quipus: Mil años de historia anudada en los Andes y su futuro digital. Planeta Perú.
- Urton, G. (1998). “From Knots to Narratives.” Ethnohistory, 45(3), 409–438. Read source ↗
- Salomon, F. (2013). “The Twisting Paths of Recall.” Writing as Material Practice, 15–44.
Pick up
the thread.
Put your new knowledge to the test with three quick questions. Then continue the journey in the full scavenger hunt.
Open the full scavenger hunt ↗Meet the maker.
Pepe Delgado
Pepe Delgado is a researcher, pursuing a Ph.D. in Romance Studies with a concentration in Digital Humanities and a professional M.A. in Educational Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship. His background includes an M.A. in Foreign Languages and a B.A. in Mathematics.
A khipu represents his interests in numeracy and literacy. Khipu Hub sits at the intersection of these fields with a simple invitation: preserve cultural knowledge, make it more accessible, participatory, and tangible.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Dr. Lucia Binotti and Dr. Todd Cherner at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author’s opinions, findings, and conclusions do not necessarily reflect the views of supporters.