Australian Aboriginal enumeration


The Australian Aboriginal counting system was used to send messages on message sticks to neighbouring clans to alert them of, or invite them to, corroborees, set-fights, and ball games. Numbers could clarify the day the meeting was to be held and where. The messenger would have a message "in his mouth" to go along with the message stick.
A common misconception among non-Aboriginals is that Aboriginals did not have a way to count beyond two or three. However, Alfred Howitt, who studied the peoples of southeastern Australia, disproved this in the late nineteenth century, although the myth continues in circulation today.
The systems below are those of the Wurundjeri and the Wotjoballum. Howitt wrote that it was common among nearly all peoples he encountered in the southeast: "Its occurrence in these tribes suggests that it must have been general over a considerable part of Victoria". As can be seen in the following tables, names for numbers were based on body parts, whose names themselves were metaphorical and often quite poetic:

Wotjoballum counting system

Note that both numbers 6 and 8 here appear to be represented by the elbow. It has perhaps misinterpreted the wrist in the translation of 6, since 7 is the forearm.

Other languages

In the Yorta Yorta language, iyung=1, bultjubul=2, bultjubul iyung=3, bultjubul bultjubul=4, bultjubul bultjubul iyung=5, bultjubul biyin-n=10