when did we need to count to 1 million

[Fiendish_Astronaut]

I wonder if an ancient observer has ever tried to count the stars in the sky? Perhaps by counting a section of sky and multiplying it to try to arrive at a calculation. No light pollution would have meant that many many many stars would have been visible to the naked eye.

[GuanoLad]

@Fiendish_Astronaut

No light pollution would have meant that many many many stars would have been visible to the naked eye.

Only about 10,000 I think.

looks it up

Hmm. Not even that, it seems only 6000 are visible. Though maybe if you count both hemispheres…

Non-naked eye, i.e. a telescope, would make a big difference, but that would have been long after “million” became a commonly used number.

[RaftPeople]

Similar to census would be ballots for voting.

Ignore, I see OldGuy already mentioned this one.

[syncrolecyne]

Perhaps its telling that in most languages from Persian and Kazak to the west, the word for million is some cognate of “million?” million - Wiktionary

Words for thousand follow the usual patterns of language families/branches (like mille, tausend, 'alf).

[Malacandra]

@Fiendish_Astronaut

I wonder if an ancient observer has ever tried to count the stars in the sky? Perhaps by counting a section of sky and multiplying it to try to arrive at a calculation. No light pollution would have meant that many many many stars would have been visible to the naked eye.

This nearly made me throw a book through the TV screen when a children’s programme was reading a story about a little penguin who wanted to know how much a million was. After seeing many large numbers of things - including snowflakes in a snowstorm, which would have qualified quite easily - the little penguin was shown a night sky full of stars… which is out by two or three orders of magnitude. :smack:

[jtur88]

I would interpret the OP’s question to mean “When was the first time an exact number of seven or more digits was used in order to express a quantity of actual things?” This could have been expressed as a calculated value, such as X loads of Y objects, where XY>1,000,000, which could have been musket balls, yards of yarn, or the like, where a fairly exact calculation of both X and Y are known.

[Sigene]

@jtur88

I would interpret the OP’s question to mean “When was the first time an exact number of seven or more digits was used in order to express a quantity of actual things?” This could have been expressed as a calculated value, such as X loads of Y objects, where XY>1,000,000, which could have been musket balls, yards of yarn, or the like, where a fairly exact calculation of both X and Y are known.

I would say yes, this is essentially what I was meaning.

[Ranger_Jeff]

When did “million” first show up in reference to astronomical distances?

[dtilque]

@jtur88

I would interpret the OP’s question to mean “When was the first time an exact number of seven or more digits was used in order to express a quantity of actual things?” This could have been expressed as a calculated value, such as X loads of Y objects, where XY>1,000,000, which could have been musket balls, yards of yarn, or the like, where a fairly exact calculation of both X and Y are known.

My guess would be some 5 to 6 thousand years ago. The quantity counted would be units of grain turned into the graneries at some temple during a single harvest. Exactly where this would have been is hard to say, but almost certainly in Sumer. Ur and Eridu would be the main suspects.