system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are there any cultures, besides the Pirahã, with counting systems that are significantly different from our own? And could that influence their perception of the world?

I understand that the Pirahã count in a "1-2-many" system. Has there been any research on how this could influence the way they perceive their surroundings, given that they have no way of describing certain situations? Does this give them an advantage in certain situations, or do any cultures with different counting systems have any clear advantages?

I'm thinking of the studies that have been done on the Himba people and the way their language influences their perception of color. Does anyone know of anything similar when it comes to counting, or is this line of thinking totally flawed?

edit: To clarify - I misstated my question when I mentioned language influencing the Himba peoples' perceptions of color (I'm not trying to make this into a Sapir-Whorf question). I'm really asking more about the cultural needs for that kind of counting system, and how one kind of system or another would influence perception.
gpt
Yes. Most people have abandoned other systems in favor of base ten now, due to the domination of western culture, but historically there have been several different counting systems used throughout the world.

The thing that defines the counting system is what method people use to finger count (or in some cases, if they even use fingers at all). Our system comes from the Romans, who counted by using each digit as representing a counted object. The ancient Germanic tribes developed a different system, where they used the thumb to point to the sections of each finger. This gave them a base twelve number system (something we can still see today in spoken language, where there are words for eleven and twelve instead of "one-teen" and "two-teen" in English and German, but not in Latin based languages).

Several other finger-counting methods created different base systems. There are two ways to get base twenty (which was used by several native American cultures), fingers and toes or using three positions for fingers (extended, halfway down and down). The Sumerians and Babylonians used the Germanic method on the right hand and the Latin method on the left to get a base sixty system. The Ngiti of the Congo use a counting tool made of two sticks bound together at a right angle that gives them a base four system. Some tribes in New Guinea use pointing to several different body parts and their system is base twenty-seven. Several North American tribes use base eight because they count using the spaces in between fingers. Base 5 is common due to digit counting on one hand. Something that's fun, but has no known historical usage in binary finger counting, where you use the finger up as 1 and down as 0 and each finger from thumb to pinky is a digit. This can be counted very fast once you get used to it and you can count to thirty-two on one hand and on thousand twenty four using two hands.