Download or read book Supplementary Notes on the Quipus in the American Museum of Natural History written by Leslie Leland Locke and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Supplementary Notes on the Quipus in the American Museum of Natural History written by Earl Halstead Morris and published by . This book was released on 1929 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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.
Download or read book Quipus and Witches Knots written by Cyrus Lawence Day and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-10-08 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essay in cultural anthropology provides a comprehensive view of the way primitive people in all parts of the world once utilized knots; mnemonic knots—to record dates, numbers, and cultural traditions; magic knots—to cure diseases, bewitch enemies, and control the forces of nature; and practical knots—to tie things and hold things together. In his discussion of mnemonic knots, the author analyzes the Peruvian quipus (or knot-calendars and knot-records) and suggests that the Inca astronomer-priests, known to have been accurate observers of the movements of the planets, may also have been able to predict the dates of lunar eclipses; and he shows how it is possible to manipulate the Ina abacus in accordance with the decimal system. His treatment of magic knots includes instances from Babylonian times to the present, with curious examples of the supernatural power attributed to the Hercules knot (i.e., the square knot) in Egypt, Greece, and Rome. His analysis of a little-known treatise on surgeons’ slings and nooses, written by the Green physician Heraklas, is the first detailed account of the specific practical knots used by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Quipus and Witches’ Knots, which is abundantly illustrated, often surprises the reader with the unexpected ways in which the once universal dependence of men on knots has left its mark on the language, customs, and thought of modern civilized peoples.
Download or read book Writing as Material Practice written by Kathryn E. Piquette and published by Ubiquity Press. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing as Material Practice grapples with the issue of writing as a form of material culture in its ancient and more recent manifestations, and in the contexts of production and consumption. Fifteen case studies explore the artefactual nature of writing — the ways in which materials, techniques, colour, scale, orientation and visibility inform the creation of inscribed objects and spaces, as well as structure subsequent engagement, perception and meaning making. Covering a temporal span of some 5000 years, from c.3200 BCE to the present day, and ranging in spatial context from the Americas to the Near East, the chapters in this volume bring a variety of perspectives which contribute to both specific and broader questions of writing materialities. The authors also aim to place past graphical systems in their social contexts so they can be understood in relation to the people who created and attributed meaning to writing and associated symbolic modes through a diverse array of individual and wider social practices.
Download or read book Indian Notes written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City Volume 2 written by Paul Wheatley and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two volumes elucidate the manner in which there emerged, on the North China plain, hierarchically structured, functionally specialized social institutions organized on a political and territorial basis during the second millennium b.c. They describe the way in which, during subsequent centuries, these institutes were diffused through much of the rest of North and Central China. Author Paul Wheatley equates the emergence of the ceremonial center, as evidenced in Shang China, with a functional and developmental stage in urban genesis, and substantiates his argument with comparative evidence from the Americas, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Yoruba territories. The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City seeks in small measure to help redress the current imbalance between our knowledge of the contemporary, Western-style city on the one hand, and of the urbanism characteristic of the traditional world on the other. Those aspects of urban theory which have been derived predominantly from the investigation of Western urbanism, are tested against, rather than applied to ancient China. The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City examines the cosmological symbolism of the Chinese city, constructed as a world unto itself. It suggests, with a wealth of argument and evidence, that this cosmo-magical role underpinned the functional unity of the city everywhere, until new bases for urban life began to develop in the Hellenistic world. Whereas the majority of previous investigations into the nature of the Chinese city have been undertaken from the standpoint of elites, The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City has adopted a point of view closer to that of the social scientist than the geographer. Paul Wheatley was professor and chairman of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He was most famous for his work dealing with comparative urban civilization. Some of his books include The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, 7th to 10th Centuries; Nagara and Commandery, Origins of the Southeast Asian Urban Traditions; and The Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore (with K. S. Sandhu).
Download or read book Science News letter written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Journal de la Soci t des am ricanistes de Paris written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Anthropologist written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of Medicine Primitive and ancient medicine written by Plinio Prioreschi and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Handbook of South American Indians The Andean civilizations written by Julian Haynes Steward and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 1270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 2009-03-06 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.
Download or read book The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City written by Paul Wheatley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two volumes elucidate the manner in which there emerged, on the North China plain, hierarchically structured, functionally specialized social institutions organized on a political and territorial basis during the second millennium b.c. They describe the way in which, during subsequent centuries, these institutes were diffused through much of the rest of North and Central China. Author Paul Wheatley equates the emergence of the ceremonial center, as evidenced in Shang China, with a functional and developmental stage in urban genesis, and substantiates his argument with comparative evidence from the Americas, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Yoruba territories. The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City seeks in small measure to help redress the current imbalance between our knowledge of the contemporary, Western-style city on the one hand, and of the urbanism characteristic of the traditional world on the other. Those aspects of urban theory which have been derived predominantly from the investigation of Western urbanism, are tested against, rather than applied to ancient China. The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City examines the cosmological symbolism of the Chinese city, constructed as a world unto itself. It suggests, with a wealth of argument and evidence, that this cosmo-magical role underpinned the functional unity of the city everywhere, until new bases for urban life began to develop in the Hellenistic world. Whereas the majority of previous investigations into the nature of the Chinese city have been undertaken from the standpoint of elites, The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City has adopted a point of view closer to that of the social scientist than the geographer.
Download or read book Research Catalog of the Library of the American Museum of Natural History 57 1 6 3 57 1 113 written by American Museum of Natural History. Library and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Research Catalog of the Library of the American Museum of Natural History 57 1 114 57 1 4 written by American Museum of Natural History. Library and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
