Who created numbers and words?

[practitioner]

Not that I expect an exact date or anything. Is there any research done into it?

[MadnBad]

Errr! that's a rather sweeping question off the top of my head our alphabet came from the greeks our numbers came from arabic and zero came from india.

[practitioner]

Errr! that's a rather sweeping question off the top of my head our alphabet came from the greeks our numbers came from arabic and zero came from india.

 

So who gave the greeks the alphabet, and the arabs numbers.

 

I remember the indian comedian russell peters stating the indians created zero because sometimes they were so tight they didnt want to pay 1. lol.

[Cavegirl]

The first civilization on Earth developed in Sumer/ Mesopotamia (modern day Iran/ Iraq) about 3000 BC and the earliest letters were pictograms like hieroglyphics, which later developed into cuneiform script. I think numbers developed through early trade in Egypt at around the same time but the number 0 originates from India and was introduced to the west by Jewish mariners.

[Rupert_Baehr]

... our alphabet came from the greeks our numbers came from arabic and zero came from india.

 

Times change. Nowadays jobs go to India and almost everything else comes from China.

[HeadingNorth]

So who gave the greeks the alphabet, and the arabs numbers.

 

 

The first known example of an alphabet is the Sumerians, I believe - the Egyptians had heiroglyphics, and many civilizations probably had similar systems (the Chinese still use theirs), which are based on one symbol representing one word. The Sumerians took the step of using one symbol to represent one sound, and combinations of symbols to make words.

 

That, of course, only explains where writing came from. Words in spoken form date back to earlier than we can tell - at least 10,000 years. In the same manner, numbers in the form of notches on a tally stick date back at least 25,000 years, but the type of number system we use today is not nearly as ancient. It is believed to be the Indians who hit on the notion of place value, which is the foundation of our modern system.

 

In all these cases, the name and identity of the genius who had the original idea, if it was ever known at all, was forgotten millennia ago.

[Chris_Sleeps]

our alphabet came from the greeks

Our alphabet is latin, with a few extra letters.

[KamalJoe]

I think it was the Arabs. Before that pictures and symbols were used to communicate or calculate.

[Lucifer]

Not that I expect an exact date or anything. Is there any research done into it?

 

GOD knows .?

[Wildcat]

The first word was spoken by Homer Erectus (a real man at last*) some 1.5 million years ago when he said Yarrrgghhh (phonetic spelling, obviously)..... which loosely translated in the style of Hemingway means an "obscenity".

 

He went on to write an early version of the iliad, but was hampered by the lack of words in his protolanguage. It told however remarkably well, rather like the skinhead version of Hamlet in the 1980s it is surprising how much use and how many different meanings you can convey with just the one word.

 

*Archaeological joke.