Sparknewspaper - Aussie flu hits campus - Jan18

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Numbers one to five the oldest words in existence

JESSICA DUDLEY 3rd Year Ancient History

(Continues from front) This trend has also been found in the Bantu languages of Africa and the Austronesian languages of the south Pacific. The researchers have suggested three possible explanations for the survival of these numbers. They believe that it may be connected to ancient brain regions associated with the ability to perceive small numbers of objects without

low limit number words are some of the first words that children learn, it might tell us that simple counting abilities have played an important role

in our daily lives, and in out communication, throughout our evolution.” This research was conducted alongside other evolutionary

language scientists from Santa Fe Institute and it has been published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society journal on January 1.

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"They believe that it may be connected to ancient brain regions associated with the ability to perceive small numbers of objects without counting"

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counting. They cite evidence that even animals are able to perceive ‘numbers,’ even though they lack any formal counting system like our own. Professor Pagel added: “Given that we know that these

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"it might tell us that simple counting abilities have played an important role in our daily lives, and in out communication, throughout our evolution"

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