system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do Arabic numbers (1,2,3,4...) not look like any other characters in Arabic? And when did the West adopt them?

When did the West switch from Roman numerals?
gpt
"Arabic numerals" is a misleading name.  They are actually from India, and became popular in the Arab world, which at the time, was a great place of science, mathematics, and trade.  Around 1000 CE Europeans began encountering these numbers the Arabs were using and referred to them as "Arabic numerals", as they were the numbers used by Arabs.

Around 1500 CE a lot of Europe had adopted the system, because it was very good, however there was much debate about adopting it since you can easily alter a number to look like another (for example a 1 can easily be changed to a 4 or 9), it is quite more difficult when working with roman numerals to easily alter the values.