The origins of numbers are cloaked in mystery. But it is safe to say that as civilization advanced numbers advanced with it and it is equally safe to say that civilization could not haveadvanced without it. Common intuition and recently discovered evidence indicates that numbers and counting began with the number one. Even though in the beginning, they likely didnot have a name for it. The first solid evidence of the existence of the number one and that someone was using it to count appears about twenty thousand years ago. It was just a unifiedseries of unified lines cut into a bone. It is called the Ishango bone. The ishango bone was found in the Congo region of Africa in middle half of the twentieth century. The lines cut into the bone are too uniform to be accidental. Archaeologists believe the lines were tally marks to keep track of something. But what it kept track of was not clear. But numbers and countingdid not truly come into being until the rise of cities. Indeed numbers and counting were not really needed until then. Numbers and counting began about four thousand before christ inSumeria. It was one of the earliest civilizations. With large number of goods and people cities needed a way to organize and keep track of it all. Their method of counting began as aseries of tokens. Each token a man held represented something tangible. This was a big step in the history of numbers and counting because with that step subtraction. This led toinvention of arithmetic. In the beginning Sumerians kept a group of clay cones inside clay pouches. The pouches were then sealed up and secured. Then the number of cones that wereinside the clay pouch was stamped on the outside of the pouch. There was one stamp for each cone inside. Someone soon hit upon the idea that cones were not needed at all. Instead ofhaving a pouch filled with five cones just write those five marks on a clay tablet. This is exactly what happened. This development of keeping track on clay tablets had ramificationsbeyond arithmetic. With it the idea of writing was also born. But if you are keeping track of your wealth with marks made on a clay tablet what is to stop you from making your own claytablet and stamping it with any number. To prevent this from happening the Sumerians needed an official method of keeping track and an official group of people who kept track. Aselect few were allowed to enter this group. They essentially became the first accountants of the world. It was the Egyptians who transformed the number one from a unit of countingthings to a unit of measuring things. In three thousand before christ the number one became use as unit of measurement to measure length in Egypt. What they invented was the cubitwhich they considered to be sacred measurement. A cubit is the length of a forearm of man from elbow to fingertips. The width of the palm was also included. Considered sacred as theywere they had officially ordained sticks which they kept in the temples. If copy cubits were needed they were made from original cubits kept in the temple.