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They aren't required, it's certainly possible to have a number system and not a writing system. But for anything where you need to do non-trivial arithmetic or
by openasocket 9y ago
They aren't required, it's certainly possible to have a number system and not a writing system. But for anything where you need to do non-trivial arithmetic or accounting you can't just do all that in your head and memorize the results. You need some way of recording the results in a persistent way, even if it's just tallies carved into a piece of wood. And I imagine any culture that figures out a recording system for numbers would pretty quickly (in historical terms, so like years or decades) develop a writing system. I could be wrong of course, I haven't really formally studied ancient history.
Aside: Is Quipu not a writing system? I thought there was some evidence indicating it was.
- panglott 9y agoPebble-tables are fine for that, but don't leave a persistant record. Mostly when I hear "writing system" I think "linguistic writing system", a writing system for language, rather than "mathematical writing system". But IIRC a number of writing systems started off first as mathematical record systems before developing to encode linguistic information. Maybe a good example is cuneiform, which started off as tally marks in balls of soft clay stored in jars, for tax purposes, which developed symbols for encoding what kind of goods were being counted. Quipu may be similar, with more nascent development as a linguistic system.