Use of knotted string accounting records in old Hawaii and ancient China

              The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 10, No. 2 Fall 1983
Lyle E. Jacobsen UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII
USE OF KNOTTED STRING ACCOUNTING RECORDS IN OLD HAWAII AND ANCIENT CHINA
Abstract: The use of the "quipu" for accounting purposes has been primarily attributed to the Peruvian Inca culture in the days of old. Documented evidence, however, provides that early Hawaiians and ancient Chinese predated the Incan usage. Studies concentrating on the quipu as an accounting device rather than as an element in the evolution of the writing process might provide valuable con-tributions to the solution of the mystery surrounding this artifact. Insight into the development of mankind in the Pacific may be gained by understanding the use of the quipu in the East and West, and in Hawaii—the "meeting place" of the Pacific.
An artifact mentioned in the research of anthropology, archae-ology, and ethnology is of interest to accountants, particularly ac-counting historians. This artifact—the knotted string record—is most commonly known in published research of these three scientific areas by the Peruvian (not Spanish) name, "quipu," "quippo," "kipu," or "khipu" which means "knots" in the Quechua (or Quichua) Indian language of the Peruvian Inca Empire.
The author became fascinated with these knotted string records while assisting Stanford University establish Latin America's first exclusively graduate school of business in Lima, Peru in 1963-64. He published an article describing the Incan use of the quipu.1 The article which follows presents some documentation of early use of knotted string records as accounting devices in old Hawaii and in ancient China.
Hawaii
The Hawaiian use of knotted string records as accounting devices is described more recently by travelers than either the Peruvian or Chinese use. One such traveler to Hawaii, cited later in this
Acknowledgement to Michael George Brown, Laurie Darnell, and Philip Lai for reading this manuscript and offering suggestions for improvement. Special thanks to Yihua Wang of Peking, Peoples' Republic of China, an East Asian Language scholar at University of Hawaii.