How did they manage without alphabetic writing?
We’re told that most of the administration was done by people who had learned to use quipus, or knotted records. There are at least two chronicles that talk about schools, and in fact they talk about a four-year program [to teach administrative skills]. Now some people have said that sounds suspiciously European, but we certainly know that administrators were brought to Cuzco to learn Quechua. And they had to learn how to use the quipus. There’s no evidence that I’m convinced of that indicates that the quipus existed broadly before the Inca empire, so I think one can make a very good argument that the quipus were an administrative innovation. These knotted records were used by an entire hierarchy of administrators. The lowest-level knotted records were summarized in a higher-level knotted record that was held by a higher administrator, and so on upwards to the capital. But we are told of these records that in any community there wouldn’t be one account. There would be two, kept by two
