Blockchain is Over 1,400 Years Old
Think blockchain is new? Not really. It may be closer to 2,000 years old. Here's what its predecessor can teach us about the future of blockchain.
Qu’eche’s fingers were gnarled and knotty and today, almost numb. He’d been tying knots in strands, readjusting them, keeping the strands hanging from the main line from tangling. All while keeping an attentive ear to the King’s tax collector and census taker. It was a cold day, high up in the Andean mountains of Peru. Qu’eche was a master of the Quipu. The first example of what today we may call blockchain.
What are the similarities between the quipu and blockchain and what does their use tell us about the struggles today for blockchain to become a general purpose technology like it could? Will it even get there and what are the sociocultural hurdles holding blockchain back?
What is the Quipu?
It was a technology created by Andean civilizations that goes as far back, we currently think, to around 650 AD. Which would suggest that if that’s the archeological evidence, it would have been invented much earlier, probably in a cruder form as it evolved. Perhaps then the quipu and it’s predecessor(s) are closer to 2,000 years old?
The quipu was a brilliantly designed, mathematically complex system of record keeping, used for census keeping, tax tracking, inventories, military organisation and familial record keeping (well, for royalty anyway), calendars and likely other relevant information.
The quipu was designed based on the type of cotton or wool strings with knots tied to the strings, which might also vary in length. The knots and cords contained numerical and other values, like indicators and stories built on a base ten positional system. While their use in Incan societies is fairly well known, it is believed they were used by other Andean cultures such as the Aztec and Nazca (of the famous Nazca lines in Peru.)
Some quipus weren’t just for boring record keeping or showing how even back then, the tax man could find you. Death and taxes has been around a rather long time. They were also used for ritual purposes such as religious ceremonies or the telling of stories. Important means of creating social cohesion at the time.
Perhaps the very idea for blockchain originated with the inventors study of the quipu? We’ll likely never know.
More recently discovered quipus. The colours have likely been washed out due to age.
How Distrust of the Quipu Leads to Distrust of Blockchain
When the Spanish conquistadors came rolling into Latin America in the early 16th century, the quickly learned about the quipu and it’s function and important in Andean societies. The keepers of quipus, known as quipucamayocs (quipu authority), were held in much esteem in a community so would have been obvious as a point of intelligence for the Spanish.
What the Spanish quickly realized was these quipocamayos were far more loyal to their own culture and king than they were to the Spaniards. How surprising. And these quipycamayos would often lie about what was on the quipu and it’s meanings. It didn’t help they were also trying to convert the locals to Christianity and thus some quipus were seen as religious artefacts to be destroyed.
As a result many quipus were lost. That they were made of wool and cotton didn’t give them a chance in some parts of the Andes either.
So what does that all have to do with mistrust of blockchain? For the Andean societies, the quipu was considered a source of undeniable truth. What was encoded on the quipu was true. It could only be changed by the authority of the keeper, the quipocamayos under rule of the king. Was there manipulation and treachery? Highly likely, as that’s common in every human society. But they were considered factual.
The Spanish didn’t like the quipu for, among other reasons, that it was a source of truth to Andeans cultures. A deeply engrained one. That, to some degree, survived the colonial disaster.
Blockchain too, is a single source of truth. While it can be breached and altered through, for example a 51% attack. But it’s much harder to corrupt a contract created in blockchain and the history of contracts can be quickly traced.
To some governments, especially those in more corrupt societies, blockchain is as much a threat to them as it was to the Spanish in the 16th century. Today’s quipucamayos are senior bureaucrats who reign over vast databases of citizen and societal data. Bureaucracies too are a rather ancient human invention.
The Real Struggles of Blockchain
The challenge for blockchain at a larger sociocultural scale, say nationally and internationally is that it is a source of truth. It’s not easy to foil a blockchain string. It makes things work in the way we desire them too in an ideal society. But we’ve never had an ideal society. The idea of utopias is nice, but are not possible. Neither is a techtopia. or full dystopia.
Blockchain is a black and white technology. Human societies and cultures are grey. Culture, crudely stated as the operating system humanity uses to function and survive, is always changing. Values, norms, customs and traditions are mutable and differ around the world. That makes for the lovely diversity for humanity, but it makes it harder for a black and white technology to thrive.
Blockchain has some scaling challenges technologically as well. But the ultimate arbiter of every single technology humans (and our offshoot ancestors like neanderthals) have ever invented from the stone age to now, is culture. Always, culture is the ultimate arbiter of technology.
Somehow, the quipu managed to become accepted across many Andean societies and cultures. Perhaps someday too, blockchain may be accepted in a similar way. That is entirely possible.
This is really interesting! Thank you.
Thanks kindly Brother!