The Greeks, who entered the field much later and were influenced in their alphabet by the Phoenicians, based their first elaborate system chiefly on the initial letters of the numeral names. Cyprus also used the horizontal bar for 10, but the precise forms are of less importance than the fact that the grouping by tens, with special symbols for certain powers of 10, was characteristic of the early number systems of the Middle East. In Crete, where the early civilization was so much influenced by those of Phoenicia and Egypt, the symbol for 10 was ―, a circle was used for 100, and a rhombus for 1,000. The early Greeks also repeated the units to 9 and probably had various symbols for 10. Their predecessors in culture-the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians-had generally repeated the units up to 9, with a special symbol for 10, and so on. The Greeks had two important systems of numerals, besides the primitive plan of repeating single strokes, as in ||| ||| for six, and one of these was again a simple grouping system. For numbers larger than 60, the Babylonians used a mixed system, described below. There seem to have been some conventions regarding their use: cuneiform was always used for the number of the year or the age of an animal, while wages already paid were written in curvilinear and wages due in cuneiform. The cuneiform and the curvilinear numerals occur together in some documents from about 3000 bce. The figure shows the number 258,458 in cuneiform. The symbols could be made either with the pointed or the circular end (hence curvilinear writing) of the stylus, and for numbers up to 60 these symbols were used in the same way as the hieroglyphs, except that a subtractive symbol was also used. Because the pressure of the stylus gave a wedge-shaped symbol, the inscriptions are known as cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus (“wedge”) and forma (“shape”). The intermediate numbers are then formed by addition, each symbol being repeated the required number of times, just as 23 is written XXIII in Roman numerals.Īround Babylon, clay was abundant, and the people impressed their symbols in damp clay tablets before drying them in the sun or in a kiln, thus forming documents that were practically as permanent as stone. In its pure form a simple grouping system is an assignment of special names to the small numbers, the base b, and its powers b 2, b 3, and so on, up to a power b k large enough to represent all numbers actually required in use. Sometimes this happened in a very unsystematic fashion for example, the Yukaghirs of Siberia counted, “one, two, three, three and one, five, two threes, two threes and one, two fours, ten with one missing, ten.” Usually, however, a more regular system resulted, and most of these systems can be classified, at least roughly, according to the logical principles underlying them. As life became more complicated, the need for group numbers became apparent, and it was only a small step from the simple system with names only for one and ten to the further naming of other special numbers. It appears that the primitive numerals were |, ||, |||, and so on, as found in Egypt and the Grecian lands, or ―, =, ≡, and so on, as found in early records in East Asia, each going as far as the simple needs of people required. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
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