Accountant-Historians of the Incas

              The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 10, No. 2 Fall 1983
John A. Yeakel UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO
THE ACCOUNTANT-HISTORIANS OF THE INCAS
Abstract: The quipu was the ingenious, knotted-string device utilized throughout the Incan empire for recording data within the decimal system. Although quipu experts have often been thought of as managerial or governmental accountants, the writings of the early chroniclers of Peru reveal that quipu specialists were more than accountants. Quipucamayocs were also the historians of the Incas.
Historians usually refer to the quipu as the mnemonic, mathe-matical, knotted-string device that was used throughout the Incan empire for the purpose of keeping careful accounts within the decimal system, even though no writing existed in that culture. Descriptions of the construction, function, and utilization of the quipu have appeared in the literature1 and there has been interest in the quipu in terms of its possible role in the origin of the concept and practice of double entry bookkeeping.2 But not much has been written about the individuals who were responsible for the prepa-ration and the interpretation of the quipus: the quipucamayocs. This article describes the role and the world of these "accountants" of the Incas.
The Accountant-Quipucamayoc
At the outset, we should note that it is rather misleading to think of the quipucamayocs as accountants, as we use the term today. Accounting is generally a matter of recording transactions by means of a common denominator: money. But the Incan civilization had no money, and its vast quantities of gold and silver had no converti-bility in our common-denominator sense. The empire's gold and silver were highly valued because they could be converted into beautiful objects for the rulers to use and to wear.3 Quipucamayocs recorded statistical quantities, not monetary equivalents, as do twentieth-century accountants.
The author gratefully acknowledges the translation assistance of Carol W. Robles in the preparation of this article.