The earliest reference of a number system I could find goes back 1,300 years, but I'd be completely surprised if the basic concepts weren't much older. http://

The earliest reference of a number system I could find goes back 1,300 years, but I'd be completely surprised if the basic concepts weren't much older. http://mt.artofmemory.com/wiki/Major_System#History http://mt.artofmemory.com/wiki/Major_System#History Example: in Greek and Hebrew, numbers were already mapped to letters, so it would be very small step to create mnemonics from the numbers based on the letters. http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Greek_numbers.html http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Greek_numbers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_numerals#Main_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_numerals#Main_table