Abstract

A quipu is an Inca device. Made up of knotted strings of varying direction and colour, some of which may be grouped, this device encodes information. Despite ongoing efforts, the meaning of such information remains largely unknown. Unlike existing work, this research does not attempt to decipher the information embedded in a quipu, but instead to apply this traditional Indigenous device to modern software development. A data structure based on the quipu is constructed. Like a quipu, the data structure is hierarchical, partially unsorted, grouped and summed. Interfaces to the data structure in the form of four classes in both C++ and Python are given. A corresponding file format is further proposed. Three applications of the data structure are presented, namely a spreadsheet, a file system and image representation. Practical examples of each of these three applications are presented. This research brings to light the importance of traditional Indigenous knowledge in modern technology.

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