Many civilizations had number systems that date back many years ago.   The Mayan’s system is my favorite.  Due to the lack of writing utensils, sometimes the Mayans used sticks and stones.  Another interesting system is the Babylonian’s; they used imprints on soft clay to write their numbers. 

One of the only civilizations knowing the concept of zero were the Mayans.  They had a symbol for 0, 1, and 5. As an alternative of lining the numbers up horizontally, they wrote them vertically. Mayans used the base number of 20 rather then 10.  Using a base of 20 instead of 10 also changes their first 5 round values.  We use: 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000, they used: 1, 20, 400, 8000 and 160000.  Below are some Mayan numbers.

0 = 1 = 5 =

The Babylonian’s number system was composed of arrows.  They used an arrow pointing down for 1 and an arrow pointing left for 10. This number system had a base value of 60 instead of 10.  Numbers 1-59 were written by combining left arrows and down arrows, and they lined their numbers up horizontally.  Although they did not have a symbol for zero, they understood the concept. When their numbers got over 60, it got a little complicated.  Below there are some examples of Babylonian numbers.

1 =  4 =   5 =   10 =   47 =   60 =

Both the Mayan and Babylonian number systems are fairly different than today’s Arabic number system.  These number systems might have worked for them, but honestly, I am very happy we do not use them.  Will the number system change again within the next thousand years?

[I made all images]