1 Jun
2010
1 Jun
'10
12:41 p.m.
From: Ben
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2010 8:50 PM
I think the Greeks used the letters of the alphabet as
well for numbers.
But who used numbers over a 100 when you think about it.
Herdsmen, for example, unless you don't believe that more than 100 cattle,
sheep, or horses were ever gathered in one place.
Ships. Members of an army. Members of a tribe (see, for a non-Greek
example, the numbering of the descendants of Jacob in a classic text).
Alfred Kroeber, when studying Ishi, believed that the Yahi (Ishi's branch
of the Yana) had no large numbers for a long time--then came upon Ishi
counting the dollars he had saved from his pay at the museum where he was
housed in Berkeley. Ishi simply didn't see any reason to count in the
abstract and got bored; when counting things important to him personally,
he had vocabulary to do the job.
Another linguistic truism: There has been no such thing as a "primitive
language" since early in the evolution of modern humans.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/