The Literate Incas

During the century before its fall to the conquistadors, Inca civilization flourished with startling grandeur. Inhabiting the Andean slopes from what is now Ecuador and Peru down into Chile and western Argentina, the Incas cut paved roads through the mountains, laid out elaborate irrigation systems, erected high suspension bridges across deep ravines. For all their engineering skills, these early Americans have long puzzled scholars because, unlike all the great peoples of the ancient world, they seemed to have no written language. Did they pass on their culture from generation to generation only by word of mouth?

Talking Boards. Now a distinguished German ethnographer has offered a fresh solution to the puzzle. The Incas, Dr. Thomas S. Barthel told the 39th International Congress of Americanists in Lima last week, did indeed have a primitive script. It has remained available, though unrecognized, through the centuries. Further, said the Tuebingen University professor, he has translated about 25 of the symbols.

Barthel's claim provoked some scholarly skepticism, even though the onetime Wehrmacht cryptographer has shown skill at cracking ancient linguistic codes. Fifteen years ago, Barthel reported deciphering the so-called "talking boards" of Easter Island in the South Pacific. The Inca mystery was every bit as challenging. But he had invaluable help from Peruvian Archaeologist Victoria de la Jara. If there was a written language, she suspected, it must be hidden in the geometric designs (tocapus) found on priestly garments and wooden vessels.

For many years, Senorita de la Jara immersed herself in Inca history and painstakingly catalogued tocapus. But she failed to find what she was looking for: an Inca equivalent of the Rosetta stone, the key that opened ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to modern understanding. Finally, she turned her researches over to Barthel. With the same shrewdness that enabled him to decipher several Allied codes during World War II, Barthel made use of an important clue in her material. Many of the Inca vessels bore pictures as well as tocapus. In fact, one common scene portrayed the act of toasting the gods. After studying numerous pieces, Barthel found a matching tocapu that, he believed, recorded the same act.

Son of the Sun. That connection established, Barthel turned to the tocapus embroidered on one notable Inca relic--a priestly garment, or uncu, now in Washington's Bliss Collection. He decided that the repetition of some of the tocapus meant that the same message was being emphasized. More important, he noticed that several signs, like Chinese pictograms, resembled real objects. That enabled him to pick out the symbols for the supreme Inca deity, Kon Ticsi Viracocha (popularly, Kon-Tiki), who is represented by the tocapu for heat (kon) and two bases of pyramids (ticsi), meaning foundation and earth. By the time Barthel finished, he had translated an entire column of tocapus: "Kon Ticsi Viracocha is the son of the sun, the heat, the teacher of the earth, the priest, the origin of light, the lord of the sun."

Barthel explains that the difficulty in continuing the translation of the more than 400 known tocapus is that they often carry double, triple and even quadruple meanings, apparently in an effort by the priests and nobility to keep the writing out of the reach of commoners. But more of their long-kept secrets may eventually be revealed. And further deciphering may give scholars fresh insights into why the once mighty Inca civilization collapsed so completely in its confrontation with a small band of Spaniards.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.