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by 1123581321 1865 days ago
Evidence of humans quantifying is roughly as old as this burial. The communication difficulty here would come from translating 78,000 into their mathematical system.
1 comments

And yet the punchline is still valid because surely they have no concept of numbers that large without any sort of base system involved.
Sure, if requiring a minimum of translation as a premise (i.e. not introducing the concept of orders into the language via explanation.) Though I would be surprised if sexagesimal turns out to always be the oldest system we unearth.