In the Paleolithic period, primitive people used marks for counting, which were carved on bones, wood, stone, or cave walls. However, as the civilization developed, people realized that they should find a way to record large numbers.
Many number systems, including Greek, Egyptian, and Hebrew numerals, were only extensions of tally marks. For example, in the Ancient Egyptian system, a coiled rope stood for 100 and a water lily, for 1,000. Each symbol was repeated as many times as necessary, and all were added together. Therefore, in the Ancient Egyptian system, the number 300 would be shown as 3 coiled ropes. But this way of writing was quite difficult to understand.
The Babylonian, Chinese, and Aztec civilizations independently invented a positional system. It made it possible to reuse the same symbols, assigning them different meanings depending on their position in the sequence. And by the seventh century ACE, Indian mathematicians perfected a decimal positional system, which could represent any number using 10 unique characters. Later, Arab merchants, scientists, and conquerors spread it across Europe.
A breakthrough in the positional system happened after the appearance of the number 0. The presence and use of this number helped to make the recording of numbers more clear.
The positional notation doesn’t have to be based around a decimal. The Babylonians invented a base 60 system, and this is still part of the modern time system. For example, we use 60-minute hours and 60-second minutes.

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