There's an interesting article in the current issue of Wired about an enigma regarding the Inca civilization. According to most researchers and historians, the people who built Machu Picchu and developed a system of high-altitude roadways and messenger service spreading across a 3,000 mile empire somehow never learned to write. Harvard anthropologist Gary Urton is exploring the possibility that they may have simply had a very different system of recording things -- one involving bundles of knotted strings called khipu.

The article is intriguing, and it made me start to wonder: why should it be assumed that an advanced civilization would necessarily need to write?

Think about it. Why do we write in the first place?

Read the rest...

Labels: Think Tank

05 January, 2007