Maybe, but it’s not the most likely explanation IMO.
Why not just count with the number of fingers (and thumbs) shown the same way everyone has done since forever?
They use straight lines because if you’re marking anything which isn’t paper with anything which isn’t a pencil curved lines are a bitch. Straight lines could be a stylised representation of a finger, but they could also just be straight lines. Like @Endmaker@ani.social said, if all the lines are the same length then you can make marks with axes, but the same applies when using a flattened reed to make impressions like with cuneiform.
I’m not sure if the romans were doing it but other base 12 societies pointed at the knuckles of their fingers with their thumb to count. It feels intuitive and natural. You could transact with someone who didn’t share your language and who had never seen that system of counting before.
Maybe, but it’s not the most likely explanation IMO.
Why not just count with the number of fingers (and thumbs) shown the same way everyone has done since forever?
They use straight lines because if you’re marking anything which isn’t paper with anything which isn’t a pencil curved lines are a bitch. Straight lines could be a stylised representation of a finger, but they could also just be straight lines. Like @Endmaker@ani.social said, if all the lines are the same length then you can make marks with axes, but the same applies when using a flattened reed to make impressions like with cuneiform.
I’m not sure if the romans were doing it but other base 12 societies pointed at the knuckles of their fingers with their thumb to count. It feels intuitive and natural. You could transact with someone who didn’t share your language and who had never seen that system of counting before.
You might be right, but it seems unlikely to me.