Ancient Number Systems- Math 1510

This week in my Math for Elementary Teachers online course we read an interesting article called “Understanding Place Value”. This particular article was about three elementary aged students who were just beginning to learn about ancient number systems, in particular Egyptian and Mayan number systems. The goal of teaching these students the ancient number systems was to help strengthen their understanding of place value. The very beginning of the article discussed the fact that many students do not have a firm grasp on the concept of place value. Once I realized that I would be reading about Egyptian and Mayan ancient number systems I was a bit put off. I didn’t really understand why we would want to teach these concepts to students in the year 2011.




After reading the article my mind started to change, with the key word here being started. I still wasn’t totally convinced that learning the ancient Egyptian number system was going to help young students learn our place value system. Later in the week I was working on my chapter homework and exercises came up involving ancient number systems. As I started working through them I became even more convinced that learning about ancient number systems could be beneficial. I enjoyed using the Egyptian number system in particular. It was easy for me to figure out and I understood the place values. Then I started thinking about how these could be applied to a younger student. As a 21 year old college student, I feel I have a better understanding on place value than the average 2nd or 3rd grader. Instead of simply wondering how children would handle, I went to find out for sure. I had my younger cousin, who will be a 4th grade in the Fall, come over and talk with me. I showed her my homework questions and asked if she had any idea what it was. She immediately started telling me what it was, how to do, and what it meant. I was completely shocked! I had no idea that she had learned this. I then asked her if learning this type of math had helped her understand our numbers more. She thinks it did. After learning the Egyptian math she was able to understand that when she sees the number 342 for example, she knows that the number 3 means that there are 3 groups of 100. After all of this I felt convinced that learning even the basics of ancient number systems is something that could be beneficial.

Really when it comes down to it, if learning ancient number systems can help young students understand place value even a little bit more, then it is worth teaching. In the words of my cousin “that stuff was fun”. One of the most important things in teaching is being able to grab the attention of the students. The Egyptian number system is fun and attention grabbing. Instead of writing numbers, students can draw little pictures. Not only can it be taught in a math class, but it could be taught in a social studies lesson when learning about ancient civilizations.

I found a really cool website that has information about Egyptian numbers. This site has interactive games as well as other historical information about Egypt. Click here to check it out!