In a predominantly barter economy there is counting then there is arithmatic then the even more complex barter equivalance which may be culturally defined or follow some ritual which is cross cultural. It may on the otherhand be something which is far more free with parties being able to set any equivalance. Counting is cultural and language dependant. Some having just language for one, more and many. The more and the many can come at varying points depending on cultural and economic needs. Hunter gather or nomadic cultures will tend to have a lower more and many than a farming culture. The capability of the language of a culture that use standardise values and coins would tend to have a more capable linguistic concept of counting but leser individual ability on the whole. No need to individually calculate the value of each item as there is a standardise unit of value- the coin. Farmers are likely to be one of the groups that is better at intutative calculations with out need to resort to actual calculations. Such as seeing a field and its yeild that year and estimating it will take one or two hand castings of seed per pace to give the best yeild. But give him the weight of an ingot of iron and the weight of a nail he might not be able to calculate how many nails it will make where as a nail smith might do that by eye. There is intuative mathmatical ability, linguistic mathmatical ability, cultural ability. There could be a language were there are numbers 1 2 3 then words fore say 4-7 then 8-12 and then 13-20 but no numbers for individual numbers in those ranges. Most languages i know have individual names for numbers up to 15. Once you get to more than 20 individuals risk of loosing count increase with each number. Safer after that to mark a tally and start a fresh. Keyed on a phone on a bumpy bus so please forgive typos
Nick
Blog - http://shirerealms.worpress.com
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