Early accounting was "1, 2, many." This lead to problems, as "Many enemies are coming over the hill" could mean 4-5, or an army, thus the chief didn't know whether to arm a few soldiers to protect the tribe, or run for the hills. Thus the invention of "Smeg-loads." This was very helpful, and solved the problem for a while. Sadly, while the king might know that he had smeg-loads of wives, keeping track of which was where and such like became a more complicated matter. This lead to the invention of modern mathematics.
--not necessarily accurate history, paraphrased from "Red Dward: The Log"