Imagine two worlds, two cradles of civilization separated not just by thousands of miles of ocean and land, but by the chasm of our traditional historical narrative. In one corner, Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where Sumer flourished. In the other, the vast American continent, home to civilizations as enigmatic...Read More

To the modern eye, it’s just a tangle of knotted cords. A manojo of alpaca and cotton threads, colorful and complex, but ultimately primitive. An artifact for a museum display case. The official story we were all taught is that the quipu was a mnemonic device, a kind of three-dimensional Andean abacus used for tracking...Read More