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Your question contains a very teleological narrative, in that you assume/recognize a natural evolution from the first to the last, with cause and result. Partia
by computer 12y ago
Your question contains a very teleological narrative, in that you assume/recognize a natural evolution from the first to the last, with cause and result. Partially because you take all of mankind as one group.
Then, to look at your question: who's your "we"? The Chinese already use another system (in many contexts). African cultures use their own systems. And who knows what might happen in the future.
- itry 12y agoWhat do chinese and africans use?
- vbuterin 12y agoChinese: 零一二三四五六七八九 Africans are a diverse group so I expect that they have many different systems.
- chc 12y agoWell, those are the numerals 0–9. You're missing 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 1000000… Chinese has a lot of number characters. They use a system where a power-of-10 number is potentially preceded by a smaller count and followed by a smaller number. So, for example, 241 is represented as [2][100][4][10][1].
- vbuterin 12y agoRight, they also have: 十 = 10 白 = 10^2 千 = 10^3 万 = 10^4 亿 = 10^8 This leads to the non-Western-like feature that the word for a million is 一白万 (1 10^2 10^4) whereas ten million is 一千万 (1 10^3 10^4) instead of 十白万 (10 10^2 10^4) which you might expect if you think using Western number systems and just internalize the rule that "白万 = million".
- gone35 12y agoTo add to vbuterin's comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_number_gestures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_number_gestures
- brudgers 12y agoIf the OP is correct some Africans used the Egyptian system, tautologicly.
- wfjackson 12y agoJoke: A Roman walks into a bar, sticks 2 fingers up and says, "five beers please".