The Huando Khipu

This khipu is in the American Museum of Natural History in New York (B8713). It comes from Huando, on the coast north of Lima, and was collected by Adolph Bandelier's expedition in the 1890s. In 1912 Leland Locke published every knot on it in American Anthropologist, with the color of each cord. It has six groups of four cords; above each group a top cord, tied through the loops of the four, holds their sum. That is how Locke showed the knots were numbers.

Here you read it group by group, as he did: tap each cord to count it in, compare the total with the top cord, tap a worn knot to try Locke's other reading, and tie what is missing. The knots and colors are Locke's. Not every group adds up. The game is a draft and not yet checked.