Pre-mathematics: Early Number Systems and Symbols
Early Number Systems and Symbols
It is commonly accepted that mathematics originated with the practical problems of
counting and recording numbers.
No written symbols and number system yet
The earliest and most immediate technique for visibly expressing the idea of number is
tallying. The term tally comes from the French verb tailler, “to cut,” like the English word
tailor; the root is seen in the Latin taliare, meaning “to cut.”
The idea in tallying is to match the collection to be counted with some easily employed set
of objects—in the case of our early ancestors, these were shells or stones. Sheep, for
instance, could be counted by driving them one by one through a narrow passage while
dropping a pebble for each. As the rock was gathered in for the night, the pebbles were
moved from one pile to another until all the sheep had been accounted for. On the
occasion of a victory, a treaty, or the founding of a village, frequently a cairn, or pillar of
stones, was erected with one stone for each person present.
Counts were maintained by making scratches on stones, by cutting notches in wooden
sticks or pieces of bone, or by tying knots in strings of different colors or lengths.
Notches as Tally Marks
Bone artifacts bearing incised markings seem to indicate
that the people of the Old Stone Age had devised a system
of tallying by groups as early as 30,000 B.C. The most im-
pressive example is a shinbone from a young wolf, found
in Czechoslovakia in 1937; about 7 inches long, the bone
is engraved with 55 deeply cut notches, more or less equal
in length, arranged in groups of five. (Similar recording
notations are still used, with the strokes bundled in fives,
like . Voting results in small towns are still counted in the
manner devised by our remote ancestors.)
Archaeological excavations have unearthed a large number
of small clay objects that had been hardened by ore to
make them more durable. These handmade artifacts
occur in a variety of geometric shapes, the most common
being circular disks, triangles, and cones.
A method of tallying that has been used in many different
times and places involves the notched stick. The acceptance
of tally sticks as promissory notes or bills of exchange
reached its highest level of development in the British
Exchequer tallies, which formed an essential part of the
government records from the twelfth century onward.
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Pre-mathematics: Early Number Systems and Symbols
Knots as Numbers
In the New World, the number string is best illustrated by the knotted cords, called
quipus.
The Mayan calendar year was composed of 365 days divided into 18 months of 20 days
each, with a residual period of 5 days. This led to the adoption of a counting system
based on 20 (a vigesimal system).
Example:
For us, this expression denotes the number 62808,
Because the Mayan numeration system was developed primarily for calendar reckoning,
there was a minor variation when carrying out such calculations.
Hieroglyphic Representation of Numbers
As soon as the unification of Egypt under a single leader became an accomplished fact, a
powerful and extensive administrative system began to evolve. The census had to be
taken, taxes imposed, an army maintained, and so forth, all of which required reckoning
with relatively large numbers.
As early as 3500 B.C., the Egyptians had a fully developed number system that would
allow counting to continue indefinitely with only the introduction from time to time of a
new symbol. This is borne out by the mace head of King Narmer, one of the most
remarkable relics of the ancient world, now in a museum at Oxford University.
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Pre-mathematics: Early Number Systems and Symbols
Examples:
1. 2.
3.
Egyptian Hieratic Numeration
With the introduction of papyrus, further steps in simplifying writing were almost
inevitable. The first steps were made largely by the Egyptian priests who developed a more
rapid, less pictorial style that was better adapted to pen and ink. In this so-called
“hieratic” (sacred) script, the symbols were written in a cursive, or free-running, hand so
that at first sight their forms bore little resemblance to the old hieroglyphs.
The Greek Alphabetic Numeral System
Around the fifth century B.C., the Greeks of Ionia also developed a ciphered numeral
system, but with a more extensive set of symbols to be memorized. They ciphered their
numbers by means of the 24 letters of the ordinary Greek alphabet, augmented by three
obsolete Phoenician letters (the digamma for 6, the koppa for 90, and the sampi for 900).
The resulting 27 letters were used as follows.
Because the Ionic system was still a system of additive type, all numbers between 1 and
999 could be represented by at most three symbols. The principle is shown by
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Pre-mathematics: Early Number Systems and Symbols
For larger numbers, the following scheme was used. An accent mark placed to the left
and below the appropriate unit letter multiplied the corresponding number by 1000; thus
0þ represents not 2 but 2000. Tens of thousands were indicated by using a new letter M,
from the word myriad (meaning “ten thousand”). The letter M placed either next to or
below the symbols for a number from 1 to 9999 caused the number to be multiplied by
10,000, as with
With these conventions, the Greeks wrote
Multiplication in Greek alphabetic numerals was performed by beginning with the highest
order in each factor and forming a sum of partial products. Let us calculate, for example,
24 × 53:
Another system of number symbols the Greeks used from about 450 to 85 B.C. is known
as the “Attic” or “Herodianic” (after Herodian, a Byzantine grammarian of the second
century, who described it). In this system, the initial letters of the words for 5 and the
powers of 10 are used to represent the corresponding numbers; these are
The Roman numerals, still used for such decorative purposes as clock faces and
monuments, are patterned on the Greek Attic system in having letters as symbols for
certain multiples of 5 as well as for numbers that are powers of 10. The primary symbols
with their values are
In place of new symbols for large numbers, a multiplicative device was introduced; a bar
drawn over the entire symbol multiplied the corresponding number by 1000, whereas a
double bar meant multiplication by 1000 2. Thus
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Pre-mathematics: Early Number Systems and Symbols
The Babylonian Positional Number System
From the exhaustive studies of the last half-century, it is apparent that Babylonian
mathematics was far more highly developed than had previously been imagined. The
Babylonian scale of enumeration was not decimal, but sexagesimal (60 as a base), so that
every place a “digit” is moved to the left increases its value by a factor of 60. When whole
numbers are represented in the sexagesimal system, the last space is reserved for the
numbers from 1 to 59, the next-to-last space for the multiples of 60, preceded by
multiples of 602, and so on. For example, the Babylonian 3 25 4 might stand for the
number .
Let us agree to use a semicolon to separate integers from fractions, while all other
sexagesimal places will be separated from one another by commas. With this convention,
25,0,3;30 and 25,0;3,30 will mean, respectively
and
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Pre-mathematics: Early Number Systems and Symbols
OTR (Part I)
1. Express each of the given numbers in Egyptian hieroglyphics. (a) 1492 (b) 1999 (c)
12,321 (d) 70,807 (e) 123,456 (f) 3,040,279
2. Write each of these Egyptian numbers in our system.
3. Perform the indicated operations and express the answers in hieroglyphics.
4. Write the Ionian Greek numerals corresponding to
(a) 396 (b) 1492 (c) 1999 (d) 24,789 (e) 123,456 (f) 1,234,567
5. Convert each of these from Ionian Greek numerals to our system.
6. Perform the indicated operations.
7. Write the Attic Greek numerals corresponding to
(a) 386 (b) 1492 (c) 1999 (d) 24,789 (e) 74,802 (f) 123,456
8. Convert these from Greek Attic numerals to our system.
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Pre-mathematics: Early Number Systems and Symbols
9. Perform the indicated operations and express the answers in Attic numerals.
10. Write the Roman numerals corresponding to
(a) 1999 (c) 74,802
(b) 1066 (d) 3,040,279
11. Convert each of these from Roman numerals into our system.
(a) (c) MDCCXLVIII
(b) MDLXI (d)
12. Perform the indicated operations and express the answers in Roman numerals.
(a) Add CM and XIX
(b) Add XXIV and XLVI
(c) Subtract XXIII from XXX
(d) Multiply XXXIV by XVI
13. Express the fractions , , , , , and in sexagesimal notation.
14. Convert these numbers from sexagesimal notation to our system.
(a) 1,23,45 (c) 0;12,3,45
(b) 12;3,45 (d) 1,23;45
15. Multiply the number 12,3;45,6 by 60. Describe a simple rule for multiplying any
sexagesimal number by 60; by 602.
