Welcome to Maths For Fun – where mathematical curiosity meets pure enjoyment for learners of all ages! Founded by a team of lifelong maths enthusiasts, we believe that numbers aren’t just for tests – they’re for exploration, discovery, and delight. Whether you’re eight or eighty, a beginner or a seasoned problem solver, you’ll find a growing collection of logic based games and puzzles that cover every corner of mathematics.
The Language of Numbers
“Mathematics is the most beautiful and most powerful creation of the human spirit.”
– Stefan Banach
Numbers might look universal, but the way people understand, write, and use them has changed dramatically across cultures and time. From carved bones to binary code, numbers are one of humanity’s oldest inventions – and one of its most fascinating languages.
Here’s a journey through ten ways that different civilisations have counted, calculated, and connected through mathematics.
1. The First Counters: Marks, Knots, and Stones
Before written symbols, people used tally marks, stones, and ropes to count. The Ishango Bone (found near the Nile and over 20,000 years old) has carved notches that suggest doubling and grouping – the earliest glimpse of arithmetic thought.
Across the world, the Inca used quipus – knotted cords that recorded trade and history through patterns of knots. Maths, it turns out, began as storytelling through texture.
2. The Sumerians and Base 60
The ancient Sumerians (in Mesopotamia) invented a base 60 system around 3000 BCE – and we still live with it today!
60 seconds in a minute
60 minutes in an hour
360 degrees in a circle
Their system was so effective for dividing things evenly that it became timeless – quite literally.
3. The Egyptians and Hieroglyphic Numbers
The ancient Egyptians had a base 10 system, like ours, but used pictures for each value – a single line for 1, a heel bone for 10, a scroll for 100, and so on. They were also masters of practical maths, using geometry to measure land after the Nile floods. Their legacy shows how maths began as both art and necessity.
4. The Mayans and Base 20
In Central America, the Mayan civilisation used a vigesimal (base 20) system – counting fingers and toes! They were also among the first to use a symbol for zero, a shell-shaped glyph that represented both nothing and potential.
Zero was more than a number; it was an idea – the mathematical birth of infinity and the foundation for modern algebra.
5. The Chinese Counting Rods
The Chinese rod numeral system (used around 500 BCE) was one of the first to use place value, allowing complex arithmetic long before the West adopted it. Red rods represented positive numbers, black rods negative – an early version of algebraic thinking.
Confucius once said,
“Study the past if you would define the future.”
In China’s case, studying the past means recognising that many “modern” mathematical ideas began there.
6. Hindu-Arabic Numerals – The Digits That Changed the World
Our modern numbers (0–9) come from ancient India, refined by Islamic scholars such as Al-Khwarizmi, whose name gave us the word algorithm.
These numerals spread through trade, conquest, and scholarship – replacing cumbersome systems like Roman numerals with elegant, place-based notation.
It was a quiet revolution that made calculation faster, trade fairer, and science possible.
7. Roman Numerals – Beautiful, but Awkward
Romans loved order, but not efficiency. Their system (I, V, X, L, C, D, M) worked well for inscriptions and ledgers – less so for algebra or multiplication. Still, it remains iconic: timeless, architectural, and used in everything from monarchs’ names to film credits.
8. The Symbolism of Numbers
Across cultures, numbers carry meaning as well as value:
4 is unlucky in China – it sounds like “death.”
8 means prosperity and success.
7 is sacred in many traditions – perfection, creation, and completeness.
108 in Hinduism represents cosmic wholeness.
Numbers often bridge maths and mysticism, showing how human emotion and logic intertwine.
9. Islamic Geometry – Faith in Symmetry
During the Islamic Golden Age, geometry became a sacred art. Repeating patterns, tessellations, and symmetry in architecture reflected the divine concept of unity.
From the Alhambra’s walls to Persian mosaics, the maths behind these designs – ratios, reflections, and rotations – was both scientific and spiritual.
Mathematician Omar Khayyam once wrote,
“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.”
His poetry described destiny, but his geometry shaped architecture that still inspires awe today.
10. Modern Maths – The Universal Language
Today, mathematics has become the shared language of science and technology. A formula written in one country is understood in another – a rare example of true global communication.
Even so, local traditions still colour the way people think about numbers. India’s crores and lakhs, Japan’s kanji numerals, and the way languages describe large numbers all remind us that maths is both universal and cultural.