HOW DID NUMBERS BEGIN?

Getting back to the basics that this series is geared to, the Sitomers ask readers to imagine living before numbers were invented, and suggest that ""you"" might keep track of a herd of animals by ""matching"" each one with a pebble. Eventually that might lead to the naming of numbers (as for clues to how it did, in some languages the word for two is the same as that for eyes or ears, or the word for five the same as that for hand; and we probably count by base ten because we have two hands). And after naming comes ordering--the prelude to counting. It couldn't be simpler, yet it could start children really thinking about numbers.