The organization of the Incan Empire was really incredible. There really was nothing quite like it until modern times. The state storehouses alluded to in the a

The organization of the Incan Empire was really incredible. There really was nothing quite like it until modern times. The state storehouses alluded to in the article can still be seen all over on mountainsides in Peru (they were always built off the valley floor where humidity is lower). These stored so much grain that the Incan empire really didn't have famines. After conquest, the Spanish enslaved the Quechua and generally had them mine instead of grow food. The grain in the silos fed them for several years. I have to think that quipus can encode non-numeric information to make something like that possible.