Archaeologists excavating at the ancient Peruvian coastal civilization called Caral have recovered an artifact which may represent one of the earliest forms of communication in the world, roughly equivalent in age to the cuneiform of Mesopotamia.
The early civilization known as Caral was first reported in 2001, as a collection of at least 18 separate towns and villages on the northern coast of Peru, dated to approximately 4600 years ago. The discovery was of vast importance, because, on the basis of the dates, Caral is the earliest of the sophisticated civilizations in the Americas, and was one of the few civilizations on the planet which apparently developed without a form of written communication.
Quipu Usage
Archaeologists believe that most civilizationsâ€"those that develop public projects such as monumental architecture, and have a geographically wide distribution that was controlledâ€"require some form of record keeping to arise and survive. The exceptions include the Inca civilization, which did not have anything we modern people recognize as writing. What the Inca had were quipu, a complicated system of knotted cords of different colors. Many of these quipus (also spelled khipus) were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, but approximately 200 of them dating no earlier than about 650 AD have been found. Although archaeologists do not all agree about the function of the knotted strings, one fairly compelling argument is that the quipu was a method of record keeping.
Quipu at Caral
The recovery of quipu from the civilization of Caral, if the context and dates are correct, suggests several things. First, this is additional evidence that Caral was a precursor to the Inca civilization (since the Incas also used quipu). Secondly, quipu as a tradition dates at least 2000 years older than we recognized prior to this point. Thirdly, and most importantly, if quipu were indeed a form of written communication, they are among the earliest forms of writing in the world, only slightly younger than cuneiform, which has been identified at the Mesopotamian site of Uruk approximately 3000 years BC.
As a very recently identified civilization of the world, Caral has the potential to help us rewrite human history.
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