Page 97 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

86 History and Science of Knots

ink. Whether this is not ingenious and whether these people are
wild animals let those judge who will! What I consider as certain
is that in what they undertake to do they are superior to us.' ([9],
pp. 32/36).

Fig. 11. Guaman Poma's Picture of a Quipu Keeper and the Supposed Counting
Board ([6], p. 66)

One of the drawings in Guaman Poma's letter (see Fig. 11) shows a man
with a quipu and an object which may be the device described by Father Jose.
It might depict a wooden board with regularly ordered holes in it. The white
circles may be empty holes, and the black ones holes containing a maize grain.
As we do not have a more detailed description, we can only guess how this
abacus worked. There have been several different suggestions (see [9]). None
of them is really satisfying. But we do not know if Guaman Poma himself
knew how to use the device and therefore was familiar with the system, or
if he simply drew a random pattern. Moreover, we cannot be sure that the
object really is a calculation device, and, as Marcia Ascher correctly remarks:
`... it might not even depict an object used by the Incas'([1], pp. 265-266).