Narrative Piece

Everyone knows that you need figures to do Maths Literacy and Maths and that it is important but not everyone knows where figure come from and how it all began.

Thousands of years ago there were no figures that have suggested the concepts of “two” or “three”. Fingers, toes, stones, sticks and even eyes where use instead to represent numbers. People also could not keep up with the time because there were not things like clocks, calendars or any similar thing to measure time with. The sun was used to distinguish between noon and late afternoon, while the stars and the moon was use to know when it was dark.

The older communities did not even have word for numbers bigger than two. They used terms like herds of sheep, heaps of grain and many people. A number system was not really needed back then. The need for a number system began when people started living together in tribes and settled in villages and other settlements. The system of barter started to develop and the need for a number system developed.  But how could a man have distinguished between five and fifty if you only have concepts like herds, heaps and many in your vocabulary? In that time there were not things like paper and pencils and they were not able to write down the numbers.

Methods have been developed to communicate numbers in writing and to educate people on how to use numbers. Symbols were also used to represent numbers like the Egyptians, the Romans used letters and the Chinese used sticks. Many number systems where use but today everyone use the modern one where all the figures are paired in tens. This number system is called the ten-system. And that is how figures arise.