The majority of surviving khipus consist of a pencil-thick primary cord, from which hang multiple “pendant” cords and, in turn, “subsidiaries”. For that, the Incas relied on the khipumayuq, or the keepers of the khipus, a specially trained caste who could tie and read the cords. ![]() Key to that success was the flow of reliable data, in the form of censuses, tribute accounts and storehouse inventories. “Administratively speaking, it was very sophisticated and it seems to have worked well.” “It was an extraordinary system,” says Gary Urton, an anthropologist at Harvard University. Historians have argued variously that the Inca empire was a socialist utopia or an authoritarian monarchy. “Break the khipu code and we might finally read an indigenous Inca history” People had their own land to farm, but every subject was also issued with necessities from state storehouses in exchange for labour, administered through an impressive tribute system. The production and distribution of food and other commodities was centrally controlled. There was no money and no market economy. Power was centred in Cusco, in the south of what is now Peru, but spread through several levels of hierarchy across a series of partially self-governing provinces. The Incas governed the 10 million people in their realm with what amounted to a federal system. Ralph Lee Hopkins/National Geographic Creative
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