Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/58

OF LONG AGO Number Stories, p37a-illustration.png EARLY NUMERALS Probable number forms from inscriptions on stone made in the third century B.C.

When Gupta grew a little older he learned of another kind of numerals. Some priests had seen these numerals cut on the walls of a cave where pilgrims often rested for the night. It is here that we have almost the first traces of our present system of writing numbers, and they are more than two thousand years old. There was no zero, however; no one could write a number like 207 in the way that we write it, and so the figures were no better than those of Hippias, Daniel, or Titus, or even of Lugal, Ahmes, or Chang.

Number Stories, p37b-illustration.png EARLY NUMERALS Probable number forms from inscriptions made in a cave in India in the second century B.C. 37