Posted on 08/02/2025 11:45:17 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Researchers studying prehistoric artifacts believe the earliest evidence of humans recording numbers may lie in simple bone markings made up to 20,000 years ago.
The study, led by Lloyd Austin Courtenay and published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, explores how these marks could reveal the origins of numerical thinking.
Simple marks, complex meaning
The research examines “artificial memory systems,” or AMSs—objects engraved with repeated marks believed to store information outside the human mind. These marks are found on bones, antlers, and sticks dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period. Some artifacts carry hundreds of lines, carefully spaced and organized.
Such markings may have allowed early humans to record quantities, track events, or communicate basic messages. Courtenay’s team says this behavior represents an important shift: from relying only on memory to using physical objects to record ideas. This change likely shaped how humans learned, shared knowledge, and built complex societies.
Clues from ancient bones
The study analyzed 22 artifacts from across Africa and Europe, some of which date as far back as 1.7 million years. These included bones with butchery marks, artistic engravings, and sequential incisions thought to represent counts or tallies.
Grecian Delight supports Greece
By comparing the spacing and orientation of the marks, researchers could separate utilitarian cuts from deliberate recording systems.
Artifacts with evenly spaced, perpendicular marks stood out. These patterns were distinct from random butchery traces or decorative carvings. According to Courtenay, this regularity suggests intentional design — possibly to represent numerical sequences or quantities.
From tally sticks to counting
Similar systems appear in later cultures worldwide. Medieval English tally sticks recorded taxes, while Aboriginal Australian message sticks tracked journeys or events. Remarkably, these modern examples share striking similarities with Paleolithic markings. Both use repetitive notches and structured layouts to convey information.
This continuity suggests that early humans may have developed basic counting methods long before the emergence of formal writing systems. The first known writing dates to about 3,400 BCE in Mesopotamia, but these bone markings predate that by tens of thousands of years.
What the marks reveal about human thought
The findings raise questions about when humans first began understanding numbers. While nonhuman animals can recognize small quantities, symbolic counting—the ability to assign marks or words to numbers—appears to be unique to humans. The bone markings may represent an early step toward this ability.
Researchers caution, however, that not every mark was necessarily numerical. Some may have tracked time, listed events, or symbolized rituals rather than specific counts. Yet the presence of organized sequences shows a leap in abstract thinking and cultural memory.
A window into early cognition
Courtenay’s team used advanced statistical tools to study the markings, focusing on their spacing and patterns. This method avoids subjective judgments and helps confirm whether a set of marks was intentional rather than accidental.
The results suggest that these artifacts functioned as memory devices—precursors to calendars, tallies, or even proto-mathematical records.
The study highlights how simple incisions on bone could mark a turning point in human history. By transforming physical objects into tools for memory, early humans may have laid the groundwork for counting, writing, and modern mathematics.
"What are you doing at work today, Fred?"
"I've had this idea in the back of my mind for something called a zero. I might give it a go now that I have a new stick".
I’ve got a bone to pick with whoever came up with Algebra.
Read “Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra
by John Derbyshire”
I added it to my Kindle wish list. Thanks.
I know it’ll be a hoot.
So this is right around the boundary between the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods.
It probably went something like this:
Paleolithic father:
Son, go over to your uncle's hut and get me an arrowhead, another arrowhead, and another arrowhead.
Mesolithic son:
You mean "three" of them?
They were credit cards. When you were sitting around the fire with the chief you could show him proof of how many horses or cows or sheep or goats you had to trade for his daughter. And if you lied, or your true wealth was not correct you died.
How about this theory:
The Origins of Numbers May Lie in our fingers and toes.
There was a big fire that burned all their paper documents and melted all the copper scrolls, so they had no choice but to scratch marks on bone and rocks.
Good one.
Like the count string I had tied to my loadbearing harness...
Napier’s bones?
The Babylonians used base-60 weighted place numbers. They did not have a sexagesimal point or a zero, so the order of sexagesimal magnitude had to be inferred. They left a space to show a zero, and understood how to express sexagesimal fractions. They knew how to divide by multiplying by sexagesimal fractions and some cuneiform tablets actually contain multiplication tables representing fractions that were not factors of 60, like 7 or 11. Dividing by 2, 3, 4, 5,6, 8 (repeated 2’s), 9, 10, or 12 is easy base 60. For instance a multiplication table was found showing multiplication by
142857 = (1,000,000/7)
285714 = (2,000,000/7)
428571 = (3,000,000/7)
571428 = (4,000,000/7)
714285 = (5,000,000/7)
857142 = (6,000,000/7)
#15 With that math that is where we got the word ‘babbling’.
Teacher to student: What is 2 + 2?
Student: It is 7 no 3 no 9 no 60
The Babylonian number system was AMAZING! It was a weighted number system, like base 10, which was only introduced into Europe in the 14th Century. Prior to that most people used Roman Numerals and used pebbles (”calculi” in Latin) to calculate with. Ptolemy recommended using Babylonian numbers for astronomical calculations. We still have their legacy in the counting of time (60 minutes, 60 seconds) and the division of the circle into 360 parts. (12 hours in a day was an Egyptian innovation, based on the passage of the Decan stars.) Originally 0 was represented by an empty space, but it replaced by a dot (”.”) in later centuries.
https://archive.org/details/mathematicalcune0000neug/page/n5/mode/2up
Otto Neugebauer was an interesting individual, he left Heidelberg when the Nazis seized power and went to Yale, when Yale was still a beacon of intellectual seriousness and intellectual freedom.
Thanks for posting!
“The first known writing dates to about 3,400 BCE in Mesopotamia...”
I was going to post something like “Amazing how they were able to have farming and living in a civilization so much earlier than writing.” But I had to google it to see when that happened. 3,400 BC - which of course makes sense.
I must be thinking of some other major change that happened shortly after the last glacial ice period 15,000 years ago.
It is shameful to compare medieval England’s tally sticks to Aboriginal Australian message sticks. In the former culture, systematic mathematics was already a discipline, whereas the Aboriginals still are illiterate.
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