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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JonM" data-source="post: 7173523" data-attributes="member: 6796515">Unless, of course, your culture uses dots and lines to represent numbers. Which some have. You seem to be confusing capability with convention.Which is why decimal places and numeric bases were invented. Having a base ten system, for example, simply makes it more convenient to express large numbers. |||||||||||| and 12 (base 10) and 10 (base 12) and 14 (base 8) are all potential numbers, represented using different conventions. The first method, using | just takes more room.But you require the concept of numbers to make any use of a tally; otherwise, why bother?  Say, for example, that there are a bunch of goats, and I tally them by making a mark on a stick, for each one, much as you describe. It is true that I do not even need to be able to count, let alone have complex numeric representation to accomplish this - just set up a one-to-one correspondence between marks and goats. I think that this is what you are getting at, yes?But that stick is of no use, whatsoever, if you have no ability to count the result, later, or describe it to someone else. That requires numeric abstraction. If you have absolutely no concept of numeric abstraction - at least internally, if not linguistically - then you have no use for tallying, as you described. The minute you mentally convert goats (or whatever) into abstract representations and back again, you have the start of a numeric system. You can't really have one without the other, at least in any useful form.</blockquote>

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