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Chapter 1
The Dawn of Counting
e origin of abstract numbers is lost forever in the mists of time. To
know what lies behind that thick curtain of mist we call human history,
we must si through what has been excavated archeologically or decipher
clues in what remains in the written record of civilizations, also long gone.
In doing so, we may catch a glimpse of what rst motivated us to invent
numbers. It is important to remember that the invention of numbers was
not a spontaneous act, but rather the result of a long evolutionary process.
Animal behaviorists have observed that birds have some awareness of
the size of a collection of objects i ...