Teaching the Most Basic Basic

Abstract

Figure are found in the cave drawings from the Middle Stone Age of what the new-math programs popularized as “counting men” (Gundlach 1969). The early representation shown below illustrates how human beings took advantage of the natural configuration of the hands to develop an ever-ready recording device. It is often asserted, and seems plausible enough, that the reason we rely on a base-ten numeration system is that we are endowed with ten fingers. Some cultures have used other systems (notably, the Mayans, a hot-climate culture in which people went barefoot. used the base-twenty system), and our culture uses other systems for measurement, but, for the most part, ten is a universal base.