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c. 20,000 BC — Nile Valley, Ishango Bone: suggested, though disputed, as the earliest reference to prime numbers as also a common number. [1] c. 3400 BC — the Sumerians invent the first so-known numeral system, [dubious – discuss] and a system of weights and measures.
Number systems have progressed from the use of fingers and tally marks, perhaps more than 40,000 years ago, to the use of sets of glyphs able to represent any conceivable number efficiently. The earliest known unambiguous notations for numbers emerged in Mesopotamia about 5000 or 6000 years ago.
The numbers 0–9 in Chinese huama (花碼) numerals. The ancient Chinese used numerals that look much like the tally system. [27] Numbers one through four were horizontal lines. Five was an X between two horizontal lines; it looked almost exactly the same as the Roman numeral for ten.
The symbol for 100 was written variously as 𐌟 or ↃIC , and was then abbreviated to Ↄ or C , with C (which matched the Latin letter C) finally winning out. It might have helped that C was the initial letter of CENTUM, Latin for "hundred". The numbers 500 and 1000 were denoted by V or X overlaid with a box or circle.
Instead of a zero sometimes the digits were marked with dots to indicate their significance, or a space was used as a placeholder. The first widely acknowledged use of zero was in 876. [2] The original numerals were very similar to the modern ones, even down to the glyphs used to represent digits. [1] The digits of the Maya numeral system
These fractions were additive and were also known as Egyptian fractions. For example: δ´ ϛ´ = 1 ⁄ 4 + 1 ⁄ 6 = 5 ⁄ 12. A mixed number could be written as such: ͵θϡϟϛ δ´ ϛ´ = 9996 + 1 ⁄ 4 + 1 ⁄ 6
During the 600s, negative numbers were in use in India to represent debts. ... the symbols for natural numbers are written using ten digits: ...
A large number like 9999 could thus be written with only four signs—combining the signs for 9000, 900, 90, and 9—as opposed to 36 hieroglyphs. Boyer saw the new hieratic numerals as ciphered, mapping one number onto one Egyptian letter for the first time in human history.