Переведите текст ! primitive counting. the concept of number and the process of counting developed so long before the time of recorded history that the way of this development is unknown to us. try to imagine how it probably took place. people even in most primitive times had some number sense they could distinguish between "more" and "less" when some objects were added to or taken from a small group of objects. with the gradual evolution of society simple counting became especially necessary. a tribe had to know how many members it had or how many enemies it had to fight. a man had to know how many sheep he had in his flock. probably the earliest way of counting way by some simple method, using the principle of one-to-one correspondence. while counting sheep, for example, one finger per sheep was probably turned under. people could also count with the help of pebbles or sticks, scratches on a stone or knots in a string. then, perhaps later, vocal sounds were developed to denote the number of objects in a small group. and still later, with the development of writing, some symbols appeared to stand for these numbers. this imagined development is supported by the descriptions of anthropologists in their studies of primitive peoples. in the earlier stages of the vocal period of counting different sounds were used, for example for "two men", "two sheep". don't forget that the number "two" independent of any concrete association, appeared much later. our present number words probably referred to sets of certain concrete, but these connections, except for that relating "five" and "hand", are now forgotten and lost to us.
