The Need For Simple Counting

The Need for Simple Counting
As societies and humankind evolved, simply having a sense of more or less, even or odd, etc.,
would prove to be insufficient to meet the needs of everyday living. As tribes and groups
formed, it became important to be able to know how many members were in the group, and
perhaps how many were in the enemy’s camp. Certainly it was important for them to know if
the flock of sheep or other possessed animals were increasing or decreasing in size. “Just how
many of them do we have, anyway?” is a question that we do not have a hard time imagining
them asking themselves (or each other).
In order to count items such as animals, it is often conjectured that one of the earliest methods
of doing so would be with “tally sticks.” These are objects used to track the numbers of items to
be counted. With this method, each “stick” (or pebble, or whatever counting device being used)
represents one animal or object. This method uses the idea of one to one correspondence. In a
one to one correspondence, items that are being counted are uniquely linked with some
counting tool.
In the picture to the right, you see each stick corresponding to one horse. By examining the
collection of sticks in hand one knows how many animals should be present. You can imagine
the usefulness of such a system, at least for smaller numbers of items to keep track of. If a
herder wanted to “count off” his animals to make sure they were all present, he could mentally
(or methodically) assign each stick to one animal and continue to do so until he was satisfied
that all were accounted for. Of course, in our modern system, we have replaced the sticks with
more abstract objects. In particular, the top stick is replaced with our symbol “1,” the second
stick gets replaced by a “2” and the third stick is represented by the symbol “3,” but we are
getting ahead of ourselves here. These modern symbols took many centuries to emerge.
Another possible way of employing the “tally stick” counting method is by making marks or
cutting notches into pieces of wood, or even tying knots in string (as we shall see later).
In 1937, Karl Absolom discovered a wolf bone that goes back possibly 30,000 years. It is
believed to be a counting device.[1] Another example of this kind of tool is the Ishango Bone,
discovered in 1960 at Ishango, and shown below.[2] It is reported to be between six and nine
thousand years old and shows what appear to be markings used to do counting of some sort.
The markings on rows (a) and (b) each add up to 60. Row (b) contains the prime numbers
between 10 and 20. Row (c) seems to illustrate for the method of doubling and multiplication
used by the Egyptians. It is believed that this may also represent a lunar phase counter.
Spoken Words
As methods for counting developed, and as language progressed as well, it is natural to expect
that spoken words for numbers would appear. Unfortunately, the developments of these words,
especially those corresponding to the numbers from one through ten, are not easy to trace. Past
ten, however, we do see some patterns:
Eleven comes from “ein lifon,” meaning “one left over.”

Twelve comes from “twe lif,” meaning “two left over.”
Thirteen comes from “Three and ten” as do fourteen through nineteen.
Twenty appears to come from “twe-tig” which means “two tens.”
Hundred probably comes from a term meaning “ten times.”
Written Numbers
When we speak of “written” numbers, we have to be careful because this could mean a variety
of things. It is important to keep in mind that modern paper is only a little more than 100 years
old, so “writing” in times past often took on forms that might look quite unfamiliar to us today.
As we saw earlier, some might consider wooden sticks with notches carved in them as writing
as these are means of recording information on a medium that can be “read” by others. Of
course, the symbols used (simple notches) certainly did not leave a lot of flexibility for
communicating a wide variety of ideas or information.
Other mediums on which “writing” may have taken place include carvings in stone or clay
tablets, rag paper made by hand (twelfth century in Europe, but earlier in China), papyrus
(invented by the Egyptians and used up until the Greeks), and parchments from animal skins.
And these are just a few of the many possibilities.
These are just a few examples of early methods of counting and simple symbols for
representing numbers. Extensive books, articles and research have been done on this topic and
could provide enough information to fill this entire course if we allowed it to. The range and
diversity of creative thought that has been used in the past to describe numbers and to count
objects and people is staggering. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to examine them all, but it
is fun and interesting to look at one system in more detail to see just how ingenious people have
been.
The Number and Counting System of the Inca Civilization
Background
There is generally a lack of books and research material concerning the historical foundations of
the Americas. Most of the “important” information available concentrates on the eastern
hemisphere, with Europe as the central focus. The reasons for this may be twofold: first, it is
thought that there was a lack of specialized mathematics in the American regions; second, many
of the secrets of ancient mathematics in the Americas have been closely guarded.[3] The
Peruvian system does not seem to be an exception here. Two researchers, Leland Locke and
Erland Nordenskiold, have carried out research that has attempted to discover what
mathematical knowledge was known by the Incas and how they used the Peruvian quipu, a
counting system using cords and knots, in their mathematics. These researchers have come to
certain beliefs about the quipu that we will summarize here.
Counting Boards
It should be noted that the Incas did not have a complicated system of computation. Where
other peoples in the regions, such as the Mayans, were doing computations related to their
rituals and calendars, the Incas seem to have been more concerned with the simpler task of
record-keeping. To do this, they used what are called the “quipu” to record quantities of items.
(We will describe them in more detail in a moment.) However, they first often needed to do
computations whose results would be recorded on quipu. To do these computations, they would
sometimes use a counting board constructed with a slab of stone. In the slab were cut
rectangular and square compartments so that an octagonal (eight-sided) region was left in the
middle. Two opposite corner rectangles were raised. Another two sections were mounted on the
original surface of the slab so that there were actually three levels available. In the figure
shown, the darkest shaded corner regions represent the highest, third level. The lighter shaded
regions surrounding the corners are the second highest levels, while the clear white rectangles
are the compartments cut into the stone slab.
Pebbles were used to keep accounts and their positions within the various levels and
compartments gave totals. For example, a pebble in a smaller (white) compartment represented
one unit. Note that there are 12 such squares around the outer edge of the figure. If a pebble was
put into one of the two (white) larger, rectangular compartments, its value was doubled. When a
pebble was put in the octagonal region in the middle of the slab, its value was tripled. If a
pebble was placed on the second (shaded) level, its value was multiplied by six. And finally, if a
pebble was found on one of the two highest corner levels, its value was multiplied by twelve.
Different objects could be counted at the same time by representing different objects by
different colored pebbles.

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The Need for Simple Counting

Eleven comes from “ein lifon,” meaning “one left over.”

The Number and Counting System of the Inca Civilization

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