Most of the extant quipus have been found in graves. There is a “very extensive collection” of these in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a recent study of these (by L. L. Locke) concludes that they were used purely for numerical purposes and not for counting but for record keeping.
The best known notch books are the message sticks used in Australia and Africa and the tally used in the British Exchequer up to a recent date for the keeping of accounts. This is the method, famous in fiction for the recording on their knife-hilts by Indians and superhuman white scouts of the number of scalps taken in war. It is the essence of the so-called Clog Almanac, the nick-stick, and other ways of notching up accounts still often found in rural communities. The memory of it survives in the use of the word score or so many tallies, used until recently of the runs made in baseball.
Collections of notch records are found at least among the Australian aborigines—and it will be remembered that it was the burning of the huge collection of tallies in the early part of the last century which resulted in the setting fire to and burning up of the parliament houses.
It is possible that the notch method was preceded by a system of stripping off leaves or twigs from a branch, leaving a certain number. The early pictures of Seshait, goddess of writing among the Egyptians, who records the years of a king’s reign, suggests possibly this method, and in this case perhaps also the Egyptian sign for year with its single projection may refer to this method.
Wampum is one of the best known and most picturesque forms of mnemonic object writing. It was used by the American Indians for treaties, title deeds, memorials of events, etc., and considerable collections of these tribal records were not uncommon. Although in itself a later and more complex style, in essence it stands for a style still older than the knot writing which it resembles. Existing examples of wampum leave the simple mnemonic knot or notch far behind and have progressed even to figures or pictures often of an advanced or symbolic type, made in the beads, but the beads themselves stand for what may perhaps be the very earliest form of mnemonic record—that is the object record where each object is represented not by a pictorial object but by some sample object like a pebble or a twig. The heap of pebbles used for counting was possibly the very earliest mnemonic record.
An extremely interesting modern example of calculation in pebbles and the representation by them even of sums in addition, multiplication, and subtraction, turns up among the psychological investigations in the matter of mathematical prodigies. It appears that most of the famous lightning calculators have been the children of peasants, and a large part of these Italian shepherd boys, who apparently used pebbles for the counting of their sheep and amused themselves by making a plaything of these. Other lightning calculators (Ampère e.g.) used pebbles, and Bidder a bag of shot, while others have taught themselves by the use of marbles, peas, or the use of their fingers. (Bruce in McClure v. 39, 1912, pp. 593-4.) The counting by pebble heaps is found indeed generally in the playing of children. When it comes to transporting or making more permanent collections this was done by means of a pouch in the case of pebbles—one of the earliest forms of record holder and one of the most ancient forms even of phonetic writings, or tying together in bundles as in the case of twig bundles found among primitive peoples, or by stringing together as in trophy necklaces or some forms of the abacus.
A Collection of Wampum
American Museum of Natural History, N. Y.
Nos. 150.1/1945, 1579 A.D. 50/2287, 2902
With these mnemonic object writings is perhaps also to be classed the symbols formed with bits of wood used in the Indian game of cañute described by J. P. Harrington. “The San Ildefonso cañute figures present a symbolism so highly conventionalized and so complex that the term language might well be applied—a symbolism not essentially different in origin or practice from human speech, gesture language, African drum language, conventionalized graphic designs that have a commonly understood meaning, or writing whether executed in pictograms, ideograms, phonograms, or phonetic symbols” (AmAnthropol n.s. 14, 1912, p. 265). “These figures are, it is said, made much in the same fashion as children graphically represent certain ideas by arranging small objects.”