Counting is an innovative, erudite, world-wrapping journey through humanity’s marvellous ability to impose numbers on things. Acclaimed historian and mathematician Benjamin Wardhaugh draws on stories from the Stone Age to cyberspace in pursuit of the elusive, fascinating, endlessly diverse history of human counting.

Starting with the roots of counting in human brains, bodies and environments, Wardhaugh tours us around the world and through time while exploring the different flavours of counting that have developed over millennia. We meet the makers of bead necklaces in ancient South Africa, the inventors of writing in the world ’ s first metropolis, and the ‘counter culture’ of classical Athens. We see counting used – and changed – by Indian scholars, Chinese peasants and Papuan shopkeepers; we meet the distinctive numerate agendas of Mayan kings, US governments and Korean vloggers.

Weaving these stories together, Wardhaugh shows how cultures have shaped countin