The Rosetta String?

Researchers in the US believe they have come closer to solving a centuries-old mystery - by deciphering knotted string used by the ancient Incas. Experts say one bunch of knots appears to identify a city, marking the first intelligible word from the extinct South American civilisation. The coloured, knotted pieces of string, known as khipu, are believed to have been used for accounting information. "This work gives us some sense of how this complex information was compiled, manipulated, shared and archived in the Inca hierarchy," Mr Urton said in a statement quoted by Reuters news agency. He said that the discovery could help researchers build up an inventory of place names, marking the first time khipu have been associated with words rather than numbers. So we discover that an ancient civilization used strings to record things. And the item of choice, accounting and finance.....fantastic. no wonder their cities were decimated.
The string incident