Two chapters, the same questions asked of both
Put two Deep Time chapters next to each other — their evidence base, the dating methods behind them, the live debates, and the questions still open.
Middle Ages
What survived antiquity, what was copied, and what was lost in transmission.
Open full chapter →Inca
Road systems, khipu record-keeping, and stonework still being reverse-engineered.
Open full chapter →Charters, chronicles, manuscript libraries, standing buildings, archaeology of towns and farms, and increasingly dendrochronology and ancient DNA.
Monumental stone architecture, the road network, khipu cord records, Spanish administrative inspections, and Andean archaeology across a vast altitudinal range.
| Method | What it constrains |
|---|---|
| DendrochronologyTimber in standing buildings and waterlogged deposits | Can date felling to a year, which anchors both buildings and climate records. |
| Ancient pathogen genomicsDental pulp from plague-period burials | Identifies the pathogen and its lineage. Mortality rates still come from documentary estimates. |
| Charter and archival analysisLand grants, court rolls and account books | Provides granular economic and legal data, skewed toward institutions that kept archives. |
| Method | What it constrains |
|---|---|
| Architectural and quarry analysisTool marks, unfinished blocks and abandoned quarry stones | Documents shaping and transport methods. Exact logistics of the largest blocks are still modelled. |
| Khipu structural studyCord, knot type, ply direction and colour in surviving khipu | Numerical content is readable. Whether narrative content is encoded remains open. |
| Colonial administrative recordsInspections and tribute assessments | Preserves detail about the Inca system through a Spanish administrative lens. |
How severe was post-Roman economic contraction in the west?
Pottery distribution and settlement data show sharp regional variation.
What ended the medieval period?
The boundary is a historiographic convenience, drawn differently by region and discipline.
Do khipu encode language as well as numbers?
Some khipu resist purely numerical interpretation; no reading has been independently reproduced.
What was Machu Picchu for?
Royal estate is the leading reading, based on a colonial land document and site layout.
- How did climate shifts interact with famine and plague?
- How much rural life is recoverable outside manorial records?
- How much manuscript material still sits uncatalogued in European libraries?
- Can khipu be read beyond accounting?
- How were labour obligations organised across the whole empire?
- How much high-altitude archaeology remains unsurveyed?