ABSTRACT
The series of numbers 1, 2, 3…in English correspond to the words one, two, three…used in counting. It is these number words which embed numbers in language, so as to provide the only historical context in which they could have originated as part of human cognition. Language means in the first place spoken language, which-from the neurophysiological evidence provided by palaeontology-has probably been part of human communication for some half a million years. Writing (which for the first time provided good historical evidence for the development of language) first appeared somewhere in the middle east about 10,000 years ago. It is highly significant that the first writing was developed so as to record quantities measured by numbers. This shows that at least some of the languages spoken before this time contained number words, although even today there are still languages in Australia, and perhaps elsewhere, which contain no numbers.1 In the case of Japanese, in which both the use of written numbers, or numerals, and the historical record begins with the first contact with Chinese culture some 1,600 years ago, there is clear evidence of the existence of number words in the language spoken before this time: such words are still part of Japanese, although their form has certainly been modified over the course of time.
