There is all kinds of counting going on in the Bible. Consider the Old Testament. The first five books of the Bible (Pentateuch) has counts of the entire population, of only the priestly groups, and of males eligible for the military, the number of Jacob’s family members who went to Egypt, of the Israelites who left Egypt, and of the exiles who returned to Judea. Counting was used for military and labor conscription and of course, the age old people’s favorite of  taxation. The New Testament has some advice about counting. Luke 14 asks what person would not sit down and count the costs before undertaking a major building project.

But well before all the counting going on in the Pentateuch, people were counting things – sheep, goats, and children – but not later than 40,000 years ago there is evidence of the use of tally sticks, the oldest known example is a notched, three-​inch long baboon fibula on which there are 29 notch marks indicating something was being counted. To provide some context, the oldest evidence of systematic human writing is 5,000 years old

In his recent book about counting, Keith Houston writes:

At first, our hominid ancestors probably did not count very high. Many body parts present themselves in pairs—​arms, hands, eyes, ears, and so on—​thereby leading to an innate familiarity with the concept of a pair and, by extension, the numbers 1 and 2. But when those hominids regarded the wider world, they did not yet find a need to count much higher. One wolf is manageable; two wolves are a challenge; any more than that and time spent counting wolves is better spent making oneself scarce. The result is that the very smallest whole numbers have a special place in human culture, and especially in language. English, for instance, has a host of specialized terms centered around twoness: a brace of pheasants; a team of horses; a yoke of oxen; a pair of, well, anything. An ancient Greek could employ specific plurals to distinguish between groups of one, two, and many friends (ho philos, to philo, and hoi philoi). In Latin, the numbers 1 to 4 get special treatment, much as “one” and “two” correspond to “first” and “second,” while “three” and “four” correspond directly with “third” and “fourth.” The Romans extended that special treatment into their day-​to-​day lives: after their first four sons, a Roman family would typically name the rest by number (Quintus, Sextus, Septimus, and so forth), and only the first four months of the early Roman calendar had proper names. (Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator)

And in case you are wondering about the “rise” of the pocket calculator, here in the United States, the Hewlett Packard HP-35 scientific calculator (~$400) appeared in 1972, followed quickly by the Texas Instrument SR-10 (~$100). The “SR” indicated what was being replaced: the slide rule. At this point, many an engineering student of a certain age are having nostalgic memories (or nightmares). I would point out that slide rules came in a full sized version with carry cases which could be clipped to your belt (a fashion faux pas if there ever was one), but the mini-version could fit into your pocket. Making that the first pocket calculator able to do logarithmic calculations.

Of course all that had to wait until we began to wear clothes – about 170,000 years ago – and on the appearance of pockets in clothing which seems to date back only several thousand years. I guess ancient people had to carry around their tally sticks by hand.

And that just makes me wonder about the domestication of dogs. Why? What happens if the pet dog took the tally stick and buried it somewhere? I bet out ancient ancestor did not count on that.

Image credit: Pexels