Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The yupana (Quechua for "counting tool") is a device used by the Incas, presumably as a type of calculator. Though some researchers have hypothesized how this implement might function like an abacus, others are less certain that it was used for this purpose. The 16th-century account of Spanish priest Jose de Acosta suggests that Incas may have possessed such a device: "To see them use another kind of calculator, with maize kernels. In order to carry out a very difficult computation for which an able computer would require pen and paper, these Indians make use of their kernels. They place one here, three somewhere else and eight. They move one kernel here and there and the fact is that they are able to complete their computation without making the smallest mistake. as a matter of fact, they are better at practical arithmetic than we are with pen and ink. Whether this is not ingenious and whether these people are wild animals let those judge who will! What I consider as certain is that in what they undertake to do they are superior to us."

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