We know full well that Maya Codices went well beyond purely administrative records, with the handful of surviving pieces offering tantalising glimpses into otherwise entirely lost traditions of literature. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they wouldn't have written their own treatises on Law, History, Philosophy and the like: the written language they had developed was fully capable of transmitting such information.
Quipu did primarily record numerical data for administrative purposes as you say, but even though they continued to be used after the Spanish Conquest (indeed, the Spanish promoted their use at several points) they aren't an entirely deciphered system, and compelling arguments have been made that, at least at one point, they represented a hybrid system that was being adapted to include other information. It is perhaps notable that, if Quipu had for their entire history of use remained a purely numerical device, they would be by far the longest-lived writing system to have done so, having been in continuous use for as much as 4000 years.
FuckingVeet t1_ix8czth wrote
Reply to comment by GullibleAntelope in Yuri Knorozov: The Maverick Scholar Who Cracked The Maya Code by tyrannosauru
We know full well that Maya Codices went well beyond purely administrative records, with the handful of surviving pieces offering tantalising glimpses into otherwise entirely lost traditions of literature. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they wouldn't have written their own treatises on Law, History, Philosophy and the like: the written language they had developed was fully capable of transmitting such information.
Quipu did primarily record numerical data for administrative purposes as you say, but even though they continued to be used after the Spanish Conquest (indeed, the Spanish promoted their use at several points) they aren't an entirely deciphered system, and compelling arguments have been made that, at least at one point, they represented a hybrid system that was being adapted to include other information. It is perhaps notable that, if Quipu had for their entire history of use remained a purely numerical device, they would be by far the longest-lived writing system to have done so, having been in continuous use for as much as 4000 years.