Georges Ifrah

Born speaking Hebrew Arabic and French in Morocco, and widely-traveled, Georges Ifrah provides a comprehensive tour of how "numbers" were used by people across expanses of time, place and culture. He shows that the Hand is a computer-calculator [xiv], and was used as such by the Cave Painting inhabitants of Europe. [xiii]

Ifrah also explains many numerical oddities. Why do we still use Roman Numerals (especially in dates, e.g. film credit crawls)? If we have ten fingers, why do clocks have 60 minute hours? Why did Lincoln count by 20s in his Gettysburg Address? How did the Inca count using Quipu sticks and knots on a string?

Our "Arabic" numeral forms only migrated from southern India about 1,500 years ago. And now we see the numerals shared by humanity.

"For all our differences, we are united by this great system of symbols." Ifrah explains:

"By their universality...figures bear witness, better than the babel of languages, to the underlying unity of human culture. When we consider them, our awareness of the prodigious and fruitful diversity of societies and histories gives way to a feeling of almost absolute continuity. Though they are only one part of human history, they bind it together, sum it up, and run through it from one end to the other, like that red thread which, according to Goethe, ran through all the ropes of the British navy, so that one could not cut a piece from any of them without recognizing that it belonged to the Crown." [xvi]

"Figures are profoundly human".… (more)