Mildly Interesting

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5,000 mysterious holes carved into a Peruvian hillside were an 'ancient computer' used for accounting - 10bmnews (10bmnews.com)

submitted 5 months ago by slothrop@lemmy.ca to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world

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[–] teft@piefed.social 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Ancient humans were kind of known for building things big af though. Pyramids, petroglyphs, henges.

Khufu’s pyramid has like 2 million blocks. 5000 holes is a rounding error.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Those were big because they had religious meaning.
That is very different from an accounting system, that is supposed to be practical.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Unless ancient humans were all Matt Parkers, it makes no sense to me that they'd make a gigantic counting system.

"Hey, we have 6 more livestock now"

"GATHER THE MEN, we're adding rocks to the hill!"

[–] teft@piefed.social 1 points 5 months ago

You're talking about a time that could be pre-numbering system so instead of "i have 6 sheep" it's more like "I have this many sheep" and you point to your hole which has 6 of whatever the thing is that they were using. maybe kernels of corn? Then you make sure you have one kernel for each sheep. But I'm just guessing.