Quipu

Quipu was a form of communication that was widely used in Pre-Spanish South America.

Summary
The quipu is essentially a collection of dyed and twisted wool and cotton strings tied together, a knotted page of information which could be easily transported and easily translated by people who knew the code across the wide expanses of South America.

While scholars have yet to translate the quipu, we do know that information was embedded in the quipu in a number of different ways. The strings in a quipu were dyed in many different colors, and the strings are connected in many different ways, with a wide variety and number of simple and complex knots.

With coming of Spanish Conquistadors, the quipu was viewed with suspicion and thousands of quipus were destroyed and art of making and reading them was lost.

Quipu