Mathematics of the Incas

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Author :
Publisher : Courier Corporation
ISBN 13 : 0486152707
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (861 download)

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Book Synopsis Mathematics of the Incas by : Marcia Ascher

Download or read book Mathematics of the Incas written by Marcia Ascher and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-01-02 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unique, thought-provoking study discusses quipu, an accounting system employing knotted, colored cords, used by Incas. Cultural context, mathematics involved, and even how to make a quipu. Over 125 illustrations.

Code of the Quipu

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.X/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Code of the Quipu by : Marcia Ascher

Download or read book Code of the Quipu written by Marcia Ascher and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Code of the Quipu

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780472063253
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (632 download)

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Book Synopsis Code of the Quipu by : Marcia Ascher

Download or read book Code of the Quipu written by Marcia Ascher and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores Inca use of knotted cords to transmit information and the problem of interpreting artifacts from distant cultures

Signs of the Inka Khipu

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Author :
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292785402
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Signs of the Inka Khipu by : Gary Urton

Download or read book Signs of the Inka Khipu written by Gary Urton and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an age when computers process immense amounts of information by the manipulation of sequences of 1s and 0s, it remains a frustrating mystery how prehistoric Inka recordkeepers encoded a tremendous variety and quantity of data using only knotted and dyed strings. Yet the comparison between computers and khipu may hold an important clue to deciphering the Inka records. In this book, Gary Urton sets forth a pathbreaking theory that the manipulation of fibers in the construction of khipu created physical features that constitute binary-coded sequences which store units of information in a system of binary recordkeeping that was used throughout the Inka empire. Urton begins his theory with the making of khipu, showing how at each step of the process binary, either/or choices were made. He then investigates the symbolic components of the binary coding system, the amount of information that could have been encoded, procedures that may have been used for reading the khipu, the nature of the khipu signs, and, finally, the nature of the khipu recording system itself—emphasizing relations of markedness and semantic coupling. This research constitutes a major step forward in building a unified theory of the khipu system of information storage and communication based on the sum total of construction features making up these extraordinary objects.

The Ancient Quipu Or Peruvian Knot Record

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.A/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Ancient Quipu Or Peruvian Knot Record by : Leslie Leland Locke

Download or read book The Ancient Quipu Or Peruvian Knot Record written by Leslie Leland Locke and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Mathematics Elsewhere

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691187649
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Mathematics Elsewhere by : Marcia Ascher

Download or read book Mathematics Elsewhere written by Marcia Ascher and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathematics Elsewhere is a fascinating and important contribution to a global view of mathematics. Presenting mathematical ideas of peoples from a variety of small-scale and traditional cultures, it humanizes our view of mathematics and expands our conception of what is mathematical. Through engaging examples of how particular societies structure time, reach decisions about the future, make models and maps, systematize relationships, and create intriguing figures, Marcia Ascher demonstrates that traditional cultures have mathematical ideas that are far more substantial and sophisticated than is generally acknowledged. Malagasy divination rituals, for example, rely on complex algebraic algorithms. And some cultures use calendars far more abstract and elegant than our own. Ascher also shows that certain concepts assumed to be universal--that time is a single progression, for instance, or that equality is a static relationship--are not. The Basque notion of equivalence, for example, is a dynamic and temporal one not adequately captured by the familiar equal sign. Other ideas taken to be the exclusive province of professionally trained Western mathematicians are, in fact, shared by people in many societies. The ideas discussed come from geographically varied cultures, including the Borana and Malagasy of Africa, the Tongans and Marshall Islanders of Oceania, the Tamil of South India, the Basques of Western Europe, and the Balinese and Kodi of Indonesia. This book belongs on the shelves of mathematicians, math students, and math educators, and in the hands of anyone interested in traditional societies or how people think. Illustrating how mathematical ideas play a vital role in diverse human endeavors from navigation to social interaction to religion, it offers--through the vehicle of mathematics--unique cultural encounters to any reader.

Math in Society

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781479276530
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (765 download)

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Book Synopsis Math in Society by : David Lippman

Download or read book Math in Society written by David Lippman and published by . This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Math in Society is a survey of contemporary mathematical topics, appropriate for a college-level topics course for liberal arts major, or as a general quantitative reasoning course.This book is an open textbook; it can be read free online at http://www.opentextbookstore.com/mathinsociety/. Editable versions of the chapters are available as well.

Inka History in Knots

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Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1477312641
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (773 download)

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Book Synopsis Inka History in Knots by : Gary Urton

Download or read book Inka History in Knots written by Gary Urton and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inka khipus--spun and plied cords that record information through intricate patterns of knots and colors--constitute the only available primary sources on the Inka empire not mediated by the hands, minds, and motives of the conquering Europeans. As such, they offer direct insight into the worldview of the Inka--a view that differs from European thought as much as khipus differ from alphabetic writing, which the Inka did not possess. Scholars have spent decades attempting to decipher the Inka khipus, and Gary Urton has become the world's leading authority on these artifacts. In Inka History in Knots, Urton marshals a lifetime of study to offer a grand overview of the types of quantative information recorded in khipus and to show how these records can be used as primary sources for an Inka history of the empire that focuses on statistics, demography, and the "longue durée" social processes that characterize a civilization continuously adapting to and exploiting its environment. Whether the Inka khipu keepers were registering census data, recording tribute, or performing many other administrative tasks, Urton asserts that they were key players in the organization and control of subject populations throughout the empire and that khipu record-keeping vitally contributed to the emergence of political complexity in the Andes. This new view of the importance of khipus promises to fundamentally reorient our understanding of the development of the Inka state and the possibilities for writing its history.

The Greatest Invention

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374601631
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (746 download)

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Book Synopsis The Greatest Invention by : Silvia Ferrara

Download or read book The Greatest Invention written by Silvia Ferrara and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exhilarating celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance—published all around the world—a trailblazing Italian scholar sifts through our cultural and social behavior in search of the origins of our greatest invention: writing. The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest—all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form complex structures such as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how—and how many times—human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth in time and all across the globe to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond. With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undeciphered scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Inca quipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah single-handedly invents a script for the Cherokee language; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, in which high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye. A code-cracking tour around the globe, The Greatest Invention chronicles a previously uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research, and a faint, fleeting glimpse of writing’s future.

The Oxford Handbook of the Incas

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190219351
Total Pages : 881 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of the Incas by : Sonia Alconini Mujica

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Incas written by Sonia Alconini Mujica and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Oxford Handbook of the Incas aims to be the first comprehensive book on the Inca, the largest empire in the pre-Columbian world. Using archaeology, ethnohistory and art history, the central goal of this handbook is to bring together novel recent research conducted by experts from different fields that study the Inca empire, from its origins and expansion to its demise and continuing influence in contemporary times"--Provided by publisher.

The Social Life of Numbers

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Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292786840
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis The Social Life of Numbers by : Gary Urton

Download or read book The Social Life of Numbers written by Gary Urton and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unraveling all the mysteries of the khipu--the knotted string device used by the Inka to record both statistical data and narrative accounts of myths, histories, and genealogies--will require an understanding of how number values and relations may have been used to encode information on social, familial, and political relationships and structures. This is the problem Gary Urton tackles in his pathfinding study of the origin, meaning, and significance of numbers and the philosophical principles underlying the practice of arithmetic among Quechua-speaking peoples of the Andes. Based on fieldwork in communities around Sucre, in south-central Bolivia, Urton argues that the origin and meaning of numbers were and are conceived of by Quechua-speaking peoples in ways similar to their ideas about, and formulations of, gender, age, and social relations. He also demonstrates that their practice of arithmetic is based on a well-articulated body of philosophical principles and values that reflects a continuous attempt to maintain balance, harmony, and equilibrium in the material, social, and moral spheres of community life.

A History of the Khipu

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521197793
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (977 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of the Khipu by : Galen Brokaw

Download or read book A History of the Khipu written by Galen Brokaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book begins by proposing a theoretical model that reconciles orality-literacy studies and media theory in order to avoid the specious dichotomization of societies into those with and those without writing. The more relevant issue is the way in which a given society distributes semiotic functions among the various media that it employs and the forms of economic and political integration within which such media function. This theoretical model then informs a history of the Andean khipu from pre-Columbian times through the first 120 years of the colonial period. The first half of the book examines early Andean media and their socioeconomic and political contexts, culminating with the emergence of Wari and subsequently Inca khipu. The second half of the book documents and analyzes the continued use of khipu by indigenous individuals and communities in their interactions with Spanish officials, chroniclers, and priests. The study corrects many common misconceptions, such as the alleged mass destruction of khipu in the late sixteenth century. Even more importantly, it highlights the dialogue that occurred in the colonial period between the administrative and historiographic discourses of alphabetic Spanish and those of native Andean khipu genres.

The Cord Keepers

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822333906
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (339 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cord Keepers by : Frank Salomon

Download or read book The Cord Keepers written by Frank Salomon and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-29 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breaks new ground with a close ethnography of one Andean village where villagers, surprisingly, have conserved a set of ancient, knowledge-encoded cords to the present day.

Communication in History

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351747320
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis Communication in History by : Peter Urquhart

Download or read book Communication in History written by Peter Urquhart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its 7th edition, Communication in History reveals how media has been influential in both maintaining social order and as powerful agents of change. Thirty-eight contributions from a wide range of voices offer instructors the opportunity to customize their courses while challenging students to build upon their own knowledge and skill sets. From stone-age symbols and early writing to the Internet and social media, readers are introduced to an expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication media.

Queequeg's Coffin

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 082234954X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Queequeg's Coffin by : Birgit Brander Rasmussen

Download or read book Queequeg's Coffin written by Birgit Brander Rasmussen and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rather than seeing American literature as beginning with the writings of English or Spanish colonists, Brander Rasmussen points to the wide variety of indigenous writing in the Americas prior to colonization. The study looks at writing between 1524 and the mid-19th century work of Herman Melville.

Communication in History

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317349407
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Communication in History by : David Crowley

Download or read book Communication in History written by David Crowley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated in a new 6th edition, Communication in History reveals how media has been influential in both maintaining social order and as powerful agents of change. With revised new readings, this anthology continues to be, as one reviewer wrote, "the only book in the sea of History of Mass Communication books that introduces readers to a more expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication history". From print to the Internet, this book encompasses a wide-range of topics, that introduces readers to a more expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication history.

Narrative Threads

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Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292774338
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Narrative Threads by : Jeffrey Quilter

Download or read book Narrative Threads written by Jeffrey Quilter and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology—all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings—called khipu—on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered. In this benchmark book, twelve international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data.