History of Learn to Count

Counting is one of humanitys oldest inventions. Before any writing existed, people scratched tally marks on bones and cave walls to count animals, days, and food. The oldest known counting tool is the Ishango bone, found in Africa, over 20,000 years old! Counting grew from simple tallies into the powerful number systems we use today.

Different civilizations invented different number systems. The Egyptians used pictures (hieroglyphs) for numbers. The Romans used letters (I, V, X, L, C, D, M). The Babylonians used base 60 (which is why we still have 60 seconds in a minute). The Maya independently invented a sophisticated system with zero. The system we use today — called Hindu-Arabic — came from India and spread through the Arab world to Europe.

20,000 years ago: tally marks on bones. 5,000 years ago: Egyptian and Sumerian number symbols. 2,500 years ago: Babylonian base-60 system. 1,500 years ago: Indian mathematicians invent zero. 1,000 years ago: Arab mathematicians spread the Hindu-Arabic system. Today: we use the 10 digits 0-9 worldwide in science and math.

The invention of zero was a HUGE deal. Before zero, you couldnt easily write numbers like 10, 100, or 1000. The Romans wrote 100 as C, 500 as D, 1000 as M — every new amount needed a new symbol. With zero as a placeholder, any number can be written with just 10 digits. Computers also run on this idea: every file, every video, every game is really just 1s and 0s.