The Poetics of Khipu Historiography: Felip Guaman Poma de Ayala and the Khipukamayuqs from Pacariqtambo

The Andean khipu was a medium of colored knotted cords used to record different types of information in the pre-Columbian and colonial periods. Although currently there is no way to read the khipu that have survived, numerous texts written in the colonial period claim to have relied on khipu as sources of information. A comparison between two khipu transcriptions of Inca biographies on the one hand and the European biographical genre on the other reveal a distinctly Andean poetics—in the sense of a structural format—with very suggestive links to semiotic conventions of the khipu.