Sabine Hyland

For over 20 years, I have collaborated with elders in remote Andean villages to discover new insights into how native Peruvians communicated through 3D coloured cords known as “khipus”. My research has uncovered isolated communities where khipus – once thought to have been wiped out during the European invasion in the 1500s – were used within living memory. The Incas kept their accounts, histories, and sacred knowledge on khipus; if we could decipher these knotted cords, we could gain an insider’s view into their extraordinary empire. My work has demonstrated, among other things, that khipus signified meaning partially through the tactile feel of different animal fibres and the twists of knots and thread, suggesting an indigenous epistemology in which the sense of touch plays as vital a role as sight.

The Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, National Geographic, the BBC, the Discover Channel and other media outlets have covered my work. An anthropologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, I began my research career when I was an undergraduate at Cornell University, where I read Anthropology and studied the Andean language, Quechua. I earned my PhD from Yale University, where I studied with Richard Burger, Mike Coe, and Floyd Loundsbury. In 2015, the National Geographic Society honoured me as a “National Geographic Explorer” in recognition of my contributions to South American anthropology.