Well, hello there! Today we're going to talk about something very interesting: the history of numbers. Numbers are all around us, and we use them every day, for example when we count or add things up.
Did you know that people have been using numbers for a really long time? The first people to use numbers were the ancient people, like the Babylonians and the Egyptians. They used symbols to represent different numbers.
The numbers we use today are called Arabic numerals, and they were first used in India around 500 AD. These numerals include the numbers 0 to 9, and they are used in a special way called place value.
Place value means that the position of a number is important. For example, the number 123 means 1 hundred, 2 tens, and 3 ones. The position of each digit tells us how many of each value there are.
For a long time, people in Europe used Roman numerals, but they were not as efficient as Arabic numerals. Arabic numerals eventually became popular in Europe, and they are now used all over the world.
Today, we use numbers for all sorts of things, like telling time, measuring things, and counting money. Without numbers, our world would be a very different place.