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2024年4月14日 · How do Roman numerals work? Where do Roman numerals come from? Is it still important to learn Roman numerals? When are Roman numerals used? Learn more about Roman numerals. See all videos for this article. Roman numeral, any of the symbols used in a system of numerical notation based on the ancient Roman system.
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numerals and numeral systems, symbols and collections of symbols used to represent small numbers, together with systems of rules for representing larger numbers.
Just as the first attempts at writing came long after the development of speech, so the first efforts at the graphical representation of numbers came long after people had learned how to count. Probably the earliest way of keeping record of a count was by some tally system involving physical objects such as pebbles or sticks. Judging by the habits of indigenous peoples today as well as by the oldest remaining traces of written or sculptured records, the earliest numerals were simple notches in a stick, scratches on a stone, marks on a piece of pottery, and the like. Having no fixed units of measure, no coins, no commerce beyond the rudest barter, no system of taxation, and no needs beyond those to sustain life, people had no necessity for written numerals until the beginning of what are called historical times. Vocal sounds were probably used to designate the number of objects in a small group long before there were separate symbols for the small numbers, and it seems likely that the sounds differed according to the kind of object being counted. The abstract notion of two, signified orally by a sound independent of any particular objects, probably appeared very late.
When it became necessary to count frequently to numbers larger than 10 or so, the numeration had to be systematized and simplified; this was commonly done through use of a group unit or base, just as might be done today counting 43 eggs as three dozen and seven. In fact, the earliest numerals of which there is a definite record were simple straight marks for the small numbers with some special form for 10. These symbols appeared in Egypt as early as 3400 bce and in Mesopotamia as early as 3000 bce, long preceding the first known inscriptions containing numerals in China (c. 1600 bce), Crete (c. 1200 bce), and India (c. 300 bce). Some ancient symbols for 1 and 10 are given in the figure.
The special position occupied by 10 stems from the number of human fingers, of course, and it is still evident in modern usage not only in the logical structure of the decimal number system but in the English names for the numbers. Thus, eleven comes from Old English endleofan, literally meaning “[ten and] one left [over],” and twelve from twelf, meaning “two left”; the endings -teen and -ty both refer to ten, and hundred comes originally from a pre-Greek term meaning “ten times [ten].”
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It should not be inferred, however, that 10 is either the only possible base or the only one actually used. The pair system, in which the counting goes “one, two, two and one, two twos, two and two and one,” and so on, is found among the ethnologically oldest tribes of Australia, in many Papuan languages of the Torres Strait and the adjacent coast of New Guinea, among some African Pygmies, and in various South American tribes. The indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego and the South American continent use number systems with bases three and four. The quinary scale, or number system with base five, is very old, but in pure form it seems to be used at present only by speakers of Saraveca, a South American Arawakan language; elsewhere it is combined with the decimal or the vigesimal system, where the base is 20. Similarly, the pure base six scale seems to occur only sparsely in northwest Africa and is otherwise combined with the duodecimal, or base 12, system.
In the course of history, the decimal system finally overshadowed all others. Nevertheless, there are still many vestiges of other systems, chiefly in commercial and domestic units, where change always meets the resistance of tradition. Thus, 12 occurs as the number of inches in a foot, months in a year, ounces in a pound (troy weight or apothecaries’ weight), and twice 12 hours in a day, and both the dozen and the gross measure by twelves. In English the base 20 occurs chiefly in the score (“Four score and seven years ago…”); in French it survives in the word quatre-vingts (“four twenties”), for 80; other traces are found in ancient Celtic, Gaelic, Danish, and Welsh. The base 60 still occurs in measurement of time and angles.
number sign. symbol. Also known as: #, hash mark, hash sign, octothorp, octothorpe, pound sign. Written by. Stephen Eldridge is a writer and editor of fiction and nonfiction for all ages. Fact-checked by. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
symbolism. number symbolism, cultural associations—including religious, philosophic, and aesthetic—with various numbers. Humanity has had a love-hate relationship with numbers from the earliest times. Bones dating from perhaps 30,000 years ago show scratch marks that possibly represent the phases of the Moon.
Kiribati. 313. 811. 25. Sao Tome and Principe. 386. 1,001. World Data Editors Amy Tikkanen. This is an alphabetically ordered list of the countries of the world.
Large numbers are numbers above one million that are usually represented either with the use of an exponent such as 10 9 or by terms such as billion or thousand millions that frequently differ from system to system.
2024年4月13日 · Its seven basic units, from which other units are derived, were defined as follows: for length, the metre, defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 second; for mass, the kilogram, which equaled 1,000 grams as defined by the international prototype kilogram of platinum-iridium in the keeping of the International Bure...
