ireland.com - The Irish Times - COMPUTIMES Of all the Dead Media, the two mourned most by Sterling are the Incan quipu (their only symbolic means of communication, using knotted cords) and the Parisian balloon post - common during the Franco-Prussian War. About the former, he says: "It was murdered. It's a very strange and pitiful story". When Incan society was destroyed by the Europeans, there was large-scale, long-term destruction of any quipu that could be found, as well as the execution of quipu interpreters.