History of ancient number systems

Abstract

Given that digit-tallying is common in number systems that are emerging today, as is the use of the hands to express the numbers five and ten. In addition, the majority of the world's number systems are organized by tens, fives, and twenties, suggesting the use of the hands and feet in counting, and cross-linguistically, terms for these amounts are etymologically based on the hands and feet. Finally, there are neurological connections between the parts of the brain that appreciate the quantity and the part that "knows" the fingers (finger agnosia), and these suggest that humans are neurologically predisposed to use their hands in counting. While finger-counting is typically not something that preserves archaeologically, some prehistoric hand stencils have been interpreted as finger-counting since of the 32 possible patterns the fingers can produce, only five (the ones typically used in counting from one to five) are found at Cosquer Cave, France