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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.
c. 400 BC — Jaina mathematicians in India write the “Surya Prajinapti”, a mathematical text which classifies all numbers into three sets: enumerable, innumerable and infinite. It also recognises five different types of infinity: infinite in one and two directions, infinite in area, infinite everywhere, and infinite perpetually.
All words synonymous with the meaning "earth" could be used to signify the number "one" as there is only one earth, etc. In the more expansive examples of application, concepts, ideas and objects from all parts of the Sanskrit lexicon were harvested to generate number-connoting words, resulting in a kind of kenning system for numbers.
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.
The Hebrew writing system has only twenty-two consonant signs, so numbers can be expressed with single individual signs only up to 400. Higher hundreds – 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900 – can be written only with various cumulative-additive combinations of the lower hundreds (direction of writing is right to left): [7] תק = (400+100) 500
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.
Knowing how to write numbers in words on a check is even more important if you write larger checks. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., most banks will default to the amount written ...
Greek numerals one through four were written as vertical lines, as in the hieroglyphics. The symbol for five was the Greek letter Π (pi), representing the Greek word for 'five' (pente). Numbers six through nine were written as a Π with vertical lines beside it.