The word number system means a set of numbers. Many
ancients made different types of number systems for there
benefit. Here are some ancients who have created number
system:
1. Roman numerals
2. Egyptian numerals
3. Mayan numerals
4. Babylonian numerals
5. Chinese numerals
6. Indian-Arabic number
The ancients used their number for many objective and jobs
though out the life.
Indian-Arabic Numerals
The Indian-Arabic numeral system is very clever. Most of the
number systems of ancient cultures, such as
the Egyptians, Greeks or Romans, relied on finding more symbols
as the numbers got and bigger. For very big numbers, either the
symbols became clumsy or people had different versions. It could
also hard to instantly see exactly what a number was. Finally,
arithmetic was difficult.
The Indian-Arabic numbers only have ten symbols, which are the
digits from zero to nine. For all bigger numbers, you know what
the digit means by where it is in the number, so 2495 means 2
thousand, 4 hundred, 9 tens and 5 units. This is called a
positional system. The Indian-Arabic numbers also have a zero
which is important. For example, you may need to say that you
have nothing in the tens column. If you left a space, then
someone might read it long, and anyway, it would be hard to tell
the difference between 201 and 2001.
Here are the symbols and their value
1=
2=
= o ne
= two
3=
= three
4=
=four
5=
= five
6=
= six
7=
= seven
8=
= eight
9=
0=
= nine
= zero
Roman Numerals
The ancient Romans advanced number system. There number
system included more different versions for numbers making it
more complex. The Romans used their number system for
varieties of things like sell and work. They would have used it to
calculate things like amount of brick needed for the pyramids.
Even now people use Roman numbers to keep a sense of the
ancient times. They are mainly used on things such as clocks.
Indian - Arabic 1 5 10 50 100 500 1000
Roman
I
V X
L
C
D
M
So you would write 924,587 like this:
Modern use of Roman numbers
We still use Roman numbers today. One
place where you often see Roman numbers
is on a clock face. The hours are marked as
I to XII. However, there is something odd
about these Roman numbers. If you look at
four, it is IIII instead of IV. I think that this is
because half of the numbers are upside
down, since they follow the edge of the
clock face round. You can get IV and VI muddled up when
they're the right way up. It is even worse when they're upside
down! IX and XI are not such a problem, since they are more or
less the right way up. In fact, the Romans never had clocks like
this, since this type of clock was invented centuries afterwards.
Egyptians:
The ancient Egyptians were probably the first civilization to use
numbers. The numbers that the ancient Egyptians used were
generated mainly from things they had seen or things they used in
their everyday lives such as a rope, or a Hubble for cattle. The
Egyptians used their numbers on the walls of the pyramids and
when they sold things such as cattle. They were really a very
advanced civilization.
1
The symbol for one may come from a finger.
Everyone starts off counting on their fingers!
10
The symbols get more complicated as the
numbers get bigger. The symbol for ten is a
piece of rope.
100
The symbol for a hundred is a coil of rope.
1,000
The symbol for a thousand is the lotus or water
lily. It shows the leaf, stem and rhizome or
root. It seems odd not to show the flower, but
you can eat the root.
10,000
The symbol for ten thousand is a single, large
finger. Perhaps it is a finger ten thousand
times as big as the symbol for one!
100,000
The symbol for a hundred thousand is a
tadpole. It seems to be nearly turning into a
frog. If you want to know why this is the symbol
for such a large number, imagine a pool full of
frog spawn all turning into tiny frogs.
The symbol for a million is a god called Heh. It
also means just a very large number, like
1,000,000
squillion. I think it looks like a fisherman
describing how big the fish that got away was.
Mayans
The Mayans had a number system consisting of shells, dots, and
lines. You could write up to nineteen with just these symbols. The
Maya were one of the only ancient civilizations that understood
the concept of zero. This allowed them to write very large
numbers.
8
0
9
1
10
2
3
4
11
12
13
5
14
6
15
16
7
17
18
19
The numbers from 20 on are the same symbols but they'd be 20
times what they really represent just add 0 after it. Using this
system you can write up to 399.
20
100