Numerals
Arabic
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Fractions
Fractions:
Roman
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Archaic:
Indian
Brahmi:
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Asian
Arabic:
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African
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Non-positional Number Systems
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Very Old Systems
Counting Rod Numerals:
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Egyptian Hieroglyphs:
Etruscan:
Attic:
Numerals are symbols for creating numbers. The term itself derived from late Latin word «cifra», which in its turn derived from the Arabic «ṣifr» meaning „zero, empty“.
In ancient times people used to carve numerals. That's how the system of counting sticks was created, and it was especially popular in China and then Japan. The sticks are still applied in teaching kids. Another way of putting down numerals is writing by letters (five hundred dollars). It had been in use as a major method for a long time, maybe till the X century. It's stil applied nowadays in contracts, for example.
The most ancient numerals known to us have come from Egyptians. It's called cuneiform writing, which contained numerals 1, 10, 100, and their combintions. Egyptian numerology flourished in 3000-2500 BC.
The new level of progress in counting systems was the creation of quantity alphabet. The alphabet's letters had number properties. To differentiate between words and figures, this sign was put ҃ . Big numbers were accompanied by special marks that signified multiplication. This symbol V̅ is the same as ×1000.
A lot of peoples used this system, including Syrians, Jews, Arabs, Georgians, Armenians, Greeks, Slavs. The most popular were Roman numerals. They're still relevant nowadays, this text is a good example, as even here there is at least one numeral correspoding to a Latin letter. However, according to Unicode, Roman numeral and Latin letter are not the same symbols. They have different codes and belong to different sections.
The figures that we use, so called «Arabic numerals», first appeared in India in the V century. They came to Europe from Arabs, which explains the name. This counting system was different, as it was positional (its value depended on its position relative to other symbols). In order to represent the empty column, „zero“ was invented. Its function was to separate positional and unpositional categories.
Apart from the decimal system that we aready know, there are other ways of counting, which are used nowadays. For instance, Unicode symbols have hexadecimal numbers. Such numbers use ten ordinary numerals and first six letters of the Latin alphabet. Upside-down question mark has this index: U+00BF.
