In the early days our ancestors were using Bones as the Tally sticks for counting. The most ancient is a baboon’s fibula with 29 notches, found in Swaziland, southern Africa and dated to about 35,000 BC. It may represent the lunar cycle as it resembles ‘calendar sticks’ still in use in Namibia.
Another invention was in Moravia, Czech Republic – A wolf bone with 55 notches 30,000 BC years old…
These tally marks are arranged in various groups although what they represent remains a mystery.
These kind of counting was followed in later modern numerals as well: our own numeral one, as well as Roman and Chinese numerals for one, two and there, are merely tally marks, I, II, III. But counting in ones is limiting, and civilizations soon began to group together single digits to create more flexible number systems based on 5, 10, 12, 20, and 60. Most seem to have their origins in a variety of finger-counting methods.
Coming up in next one – General Writing history as we know….
