The Incas did not use a true alphabetic or pictographic writing system like the Egyptians, Maya, or Mesopotamians, but they absolutely did keep detailed records using other methods, especially quipus (khipus) and rich oral tradition.

What records did the Incas keep?

Inca administrators ran a huge empire and tracked an impressive amount of information.

They mainly recorded:

  • Census counts of people and households.
  • Tribute and taxes in goods and labor (food, textiles, military service, road work, etc.).
  • Storehouse inventories: crops, tools, weapons, raw materials.
  • Births, deaths, and military casualties.
  • Agricultural production and herds (llamas, alpacas, other livestock).

Some colonial accounts also claim quipus held historical episodes, laws, and ceremonial information, but this part is still debated among modern researchers.

How did quipus work?

Quipus were bundles of cords with knots that encoded information in a structured way.

  • Cords: Made of cotton or camelid fiber, often dyed in different colors, each color or group representing categories like crops, regions, or social groups.
  • Knots: Different knot types and positions on the cord represented numbers, typically in a base‑10 system, allowing very precise accounting (like an abacus in string form).
  • Structure: A main cord held many pendant cords and sometimes subsidiary cords, letting officials bundle many related records in one device (for example, one quipu per village or per tax year).

Specialist officials called quipucamayocs (“keepers of the quipu”) were trained to create and “read” these devices and acted somewhat like accountants or notaries.

So did the Incas “have writing”?

Most historians say the Incas did not have writing in the strict sense of visible symbols that directly encode spoken language, but they had a sophisticated record‑keeping system.

Quipus clearly store numerical data, and there is growing—though not yet conclusive—evidence that some may also encode names, social status, or more complex information.

At the same time, Inca society relied heavily on:

  • Formal oral tradition: Trained storytellers and officials memorized dynastic histories, myths, and legal or ritual knowledge, repeating them in official settings.
  • Visual aids: Some sources mention simple pictorial devices or painted symbols, but these were much less systematized than quipus and far from a full writing system.

What do modern researchers think?

Recent work treats quipus as a kind of alternative, tactile “writing” or information system, even if it is not alphabetic.

Scholars are currently:

  • Building databases that compare surviving quipus with Spanish‑era documents to decode patterns.
  • Testing whether certain combinations of knot type, color, and cord grouping correspond to individual names, places, or narratives instead of just raw numbers.

The big picture:

  • The Incas did keep detailed, centralized records, mainly through quipus and trained specialists.
  • They did not use a conventional written script; much of their history and culture was preserved orally and later written down in the Latin alphabet after the Spanish conquest.

TL;DR:
The Incas didn’t write in the usual sense, but they absolutely kept sophisticated records using knotted-string quipus plus formal oral tradition to manage their empire and preserve knowledge.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.