Numbers

Numbers

•What are numbers?

WHY WERE NUMBERS DEVELOPED??

Numbers

• Most ancient number marks occur in first human civilizations

• Early counting was seen on bones 35000BC

• Early Africa pebbles and shells were used to count

• Others used body parts to count…problems??

Problems• A collection of shells, pebbles or bones

can only show a quantity over a short period of time

• As civilizations became more complex, so did numbers

Developed number systems

Number Systems• 3300-3250 BC used clay tokens to

represent different objects

First written numbers

More problems

• Early number systems only allowed for simple mathematics to develop

• Early systems repeated symbols making it difficult to understand what value was counted

Ancient number systems did not use or understand zero

• Egyptian symbols for 276

4622

Roman Numerals

MMCLXVI

I=1

V=5

X=10

L=50

C=100

D=500

M=1000

How would you like to do multiplication questions using this system???

Ancient Chinese Numbers

5080

8873

4359

Our Numbers…where are they from??

Hindu – Arabic Numerals

Place Value & Zero

• 400 – 900 AD the idea of zero was established

• Place value for the first time became important

• From here, our modern day numbers developed

Place Value…how does it help??

222,222

How is this different from ancient number

systems???