The most unusual manual counting device may well be the quipus used by various Andean ... millennium B.C.E., to the continent-spanning Inca Empire and its predecessors. Although counting with ...

The Incas had a system of accounting that relied on the quipu. Cords of various colours were attached to a main cord with knots. The number and position of knots as well as the colour of each cord ...

But among the holiest places in the empire were mountain peaks, which the Inca and other peoples in the Andes often regarded as representing the origin points of societies, and the resting places ...