Looking further back to the days before cheap writing, I recently enjoyed reading this paper by Netz about the Ancient Greek use of counters as a tool of though

Looking further back to the days before cheap writing, I recently enjoyed reading this paper by Netz about the Ancient Greek use of counters as a tool of thought: http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?db_key=AST&bibcode=2002HisSc..40..321N&letter=.&classic=YES&defaultprint=YES&whole_paper=YES&page=321&epage=321&send=Send+PDF&filetype=.pdf http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_quer... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=860996077996231654 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=86099607799623165... It explains how Greeks began using various sorts of counters or tokens for currency, policy making, court judgments, food distribution, recreation, etc., and demonstrates that Greek numeracy was quite varied and sophisticated while remaining concrete/tangible.