Learnt an interesting thing today on this arabic course,
The original Arabic number system looked like this, the one we now use.
It was designed so each character had the corresponding number of angles to the number, so the number 1 has 1 angle, 2 has 2 angles, 3 has 3, 0 has none etc…
It is so obvious now, I’ve always assumed its one of those things that just is, with no logical explanation, but here it is, perfectly simple and satisfying
My jaw is legit on the floor right about now :D
OH MY LORD!!!!! I AM IN MATH NERD HEAVEN!!
Eeeeehhhhhh……..
The “fact rage” and the “be nice” parts of me are embroiled in a bitter battle right now, so I’ll put this as nicely as I can. This is 99% likely not true. Go here or read almost any link from these search results.
Long story short: the Arabic numerals came from the Hindu numerals which evolved from the Brahmi numerals, which came in part either from Roman or Chinese or arose independently as a stroke based counting system. 1, 2, and 3 are written as vertical or horizontal strokes in the earliest Brahmi system, becoming codified as horizontal strokes later on. 1 switched back to vertical at some point, while the shapes that would become 2 and 3 arose from a kind of “cursive” joining of the two/three strokes. 4 was originally a + or X, possibly reminiscent of four lines or the four directions. The rest were probably just arbitrary symbols chosen for convenience.
This angles myth has been around for a loooooong time, put forward by someone who evidently couldn’t abide the notion that our numerals arose, like pretty much everything else to do with language, completely arbitrarily and by chance.