xBlog: The visual thinking weblog

Filed in: Language

23rd August 2004

Life without numbers in a unique Amazon tribe

“1+1=2. Mathematics doesn’t get any more basic than this, but even 1+1 would stump the brightest minds among the Piraha tribe of the Amazon. A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting.”

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