# The Highest a Civilization Can Count. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 8, 2013, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770 "2013-05-08T05:37:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/21 "2013-05-09T03:39:21Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I don’t understand this, and it seems a bit of an over-generous comment wrt a culture on the lamer side of the mathematical concepts continuum. > > “Cultures” that haven’t figured out how to count do not have a practical way of saying, “This tree usually produces 547 fruits, but this year produced 796.” And the notion of representing higher numbers can’t be solved with ‘some kind of linguistic workaround,’ because the next guy over won’t have any idea what you are saying when you tell him “The wildebeest migration count is down by a couple hundred thousand this year.” > > That’s the whole point, I think. Are we talking about civilizations of the sort the OP and I were referring to? Or are we talking about any tribal society with language? The former will have individuals who deal with large abstract numbers that don’t have physical representation. The latter will have individuals who can deal with any physical number that is of importance to them. Even the extreme tribes that people got off on a hijack about can and will do the equivalent of one-to-one correspondence. Greater than and lesser than are concepts that just about everybody has (and I think that includes the Piraha). They may normally have no need to talk about a couple hundred thousand of anything, but they certainly could understand that the herds are shrinking. If pressed they could come up with some manipulation of language to cover the situation to as much preciseness as they need. Civilizations make great fetishes of numbers, but most of the members of the ancient civilizations the OP mentioned couldn’t care less that Archimedes (sorry: you can look right at something and not have your brain tell you that your fingers are working in a different universe) numbered the grains of sand in the universe and never needed to have a number larger than two digits. The ones that needed to have these words figured out a way to express them. This happened over and over again and there’s no reason to think that other cultures couldn’t do the same if they have the same needs. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/22 "2013-05-09T15:01:41Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > This happened over and over again and there’s no reason to think that other cultures couldn’t do the same if they have the same needs. If your culture stays primitive, you’ll never have the need. To get beyond primitive, you have to have the ability to develop and master the concept of numbers in the first place. If you don’t have the ability to figure out how to count higher than your fingers, you’re pretty much doomed to staying primitive. I am disagreeing with Kimstu’s premise that any given group could represent number quantities in a reasonable way if the need somehow arose. See my example: There is literally no way for me to communicate to a member of my culture that the wildebeest migration is 200K down, even if the need to communicate such a salient fact exists. I can’t just make a term for “200K” and expect it to convey meaning when the basic problem is that the whole society has no construct for numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/23 "2013-05-09T15:26:07Z")
This is my favorite large number everything page: [http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/b/big.htm](http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/b/big.htm) Wiki “large numbers.” There’s an entire subject block (the little box at the end of an article you may have to click open) on large numbers. There is also a “category” of large numbers indexing discrete articles. Wiki “list of numbers” is always fun. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/24 "2013-05-09T16:54:14Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > If your culture stays primitive, you’ll never have the need. > > To get beyond primitive, you have to have the ability to develop and master the concept of numbers in the first place. > > If you don’t have the ability to figure out how to count higher than your fingers, you’re pretty much doomed to staying primitive. > > I am disagreeing with Kimstu’s premise that any given group could represent number quantities in a reasonable way if the need somehow arose. > > See my example: There is literally no way for me to communicate to a member of my culture that the wildebeest migration is 200K down, even if the need to communicate such a salient fact exists. I can’t just make a term for “200K” and expect it to convey meaning when the basic problem is that the whole society has no construct for numbers. We’re talking past one another. I’m saying if there is a need, a solution will be found. You’re saying that there will never be a need so no solution will be found. I can’t disprove that. I don’t know if the cultures with no solutions have never had a need or failed to develop a solution despite need. I do know that many cultures independently crafted solutions. There is no reason to think that those cultures were inherently smarter than those who didn’t, unless you define them that way. But that’s circular reasoning. To be honest, I think that your whole case is circular, because you simply assume the lack of need without proof. I do have evidence for my case, but I can’t say that the examples are exhaustive. There might be a culture with need that failed. Overall, though, this isn’t math, where one counter-example is sufficient. This is history, which happens to be about math, where the preponderance of evidence is all we can ever hope for. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/25 "2013-05-09T17:28:31Z")
> [@moriah](#): > > [Graham’s Number](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg)! > Plus one! Oh yeah, how about the [Ackerman function](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_functionhttp://) with [Graham’s number as arguments](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=207:_What_xkcd_Means) ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2013, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/26 "2013-05-09T22:19:59Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Oh yeah, how about the [Ackerman function](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_functionhttp://) with [Graham’s number as arguments](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=207:_What_xkcd_Means) Psst: > [@Ludovic](#): > > TREE(A(g[sup]64[/sup])) ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/27 "2013-05-10T03:08:01Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > I remember Terry Pratchett’s Discworld trolls count as follows: > > One, two, three, many. > Many-one, many-two, many-three, many many. > Many many-one, many many-two, many many-three, many many many. > Many many many-one, many many many-two, many many many-three, _LOTS_. I thought I was going to be the one to mention “Men At Arms”. ---
**Author:** ![Bob\_X](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@Bob\_X](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_X)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/28 "2013-05-10T03:30:14Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Daniel Everett’s claim is that the Pirahã can get along just fine without numbers except for one meaning “small quantity” and another meaning “large quantity.” So, md2000, it’s not true that every culture is going to have situations where they have to count. Even if it’s true, as Chronos says (and this isn’t universally accepted), that this situation arose because at some point in the past all the adults in the culture were wiped out, the fact is that this was certainly at least three generations ago. Today, their culture (with the usual amount of adults) gets along fine without counting. (At least, unless we assume that Everett is simply lying about everything, and most of his claims have been checked out by other people.) I read an account about the Chiquitano, who also have quantity-words like “few”, “many”, “a little”, “a lot” but no numerals. The anthropologist said that if you took one of his arrows, he would notice, not because there used to be nine and now there are eight, but because he knows each one and THAT ONE is gone. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/29 "2013-05-10T09:47:07Z")
Here’s the Wikipedia entry about the counting system of languages: > **[Numeral (linguistics) | Basis of counting system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_%28linguistics%29#Basis_of_counting_system)** > > Not all peoples count, at least not verbally. Specifically, there is not much need for counting among hunter-gatherers who do not engage in commerce. Many languages around the world have no numerals above two to four (if they are actually numerals at all, and not some other part of speech)—or at least did not before contact with the colonial societies—and speakers of these languages may have no tradition of using the numerals they did have for counting. Indeed, several languages from the Amazon h... There are a lot of languages with few numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Eurograff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/df705f/32.png) [@Eurograff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eurograff)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/30 "2013-05-10T10:53:54Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Of course I heard the “one, two, more than two, more than two…” as related to Amazon tribes. > > I suspect like the “fifty words for snow” (not true) it’s a cultural fabrication to make a point. Anyone should you would think be able to count to ten with both hands, and twenty if not wearing shoes. (and then for men, 21). It should not be that hard to go from there to naming each quantity in any culture. Almost every culture is going to habitually encounter situations of greater than 2, even if it’s “how many guys in this hunting party?” or “how many kids do you have?” First of all, the thing with “fifty words for snow” is not so simple to be treated as a true/not true story. It’s not limited to Eskimo-Inuit languages either; for example, any native Finnish speaker could probably name about a dozen Finnish words for snow (different types, colors, weights etc.), even if most of those are not in everyday usage, and with regional and dialectal words there are easily more than 50 words for snow in Finnish language. So although the original story of 50 or 100 or whatever many words for snow in “the Eskimo language” may well have been a cultural fabrication, it might well be true for some of those languages. On the other hand, claims that anyone should be able to do something tend to be based on assumptions that come from a specific cultural background. In modern civilization we learn to count early on and we like to count everything. Especially money and personal possessions. But this is because we need to do it and we are taught to do it. Why would a typical tribal culture without agriculture need to do this? If you don’t have a need to count something concrete, then simply counting your fingers would be a rather pointless activity. **Bob X** said this already better. In such a culture people don’t need to count those things, since they know each one of their possessions one by one, and each person too. They don’t ask “how many guys in this hunting party”, when they can simply ask who are there and list them by name. And in a hunter-gatherer tribe you would probably have no need to ask someone how many children they have, since either you knew them already, or if you didn’t, what would you do with the exact number? Thus I believe that while there is nothing stopping non-agricultural people to develop numbers, they are by no means a necessity for them. In general, studying the history of grammatic constructions and etymology of words might reveal something. It’s well known that many old languages have beside singular and plural a further grammatical number, the dual, to be used with things that are exactly two. This could be evidence of an older “one, two, many” counting method, or could just mean that people gave a special meaning for pairwise things. Another interesting point is that in many Indo-European languages the words for “nine” and “new” are similar, which could suggest that IE people at some point added the number nine to the their already existing vocabulary of numerals (which presumably had included just numbers 1-8). But were they really counting only to eight before that, or does it just mean that they changed from base-8 to the current base-10 at that point, is hard to say. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770/31 "2013-05-10T13:13:08Z")
Heck, English has dozens of words for snow, too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-highest-a-civilization-can-count/657770.md?page=1)