Glen Gordon:
> However, we were talking about human languages in general, not
> a specific language. Therefore, when speaking about some vague
> Proto-World, we can hardly contemplate what qualities this
> language had
My original point was that what we recognize as a modern counting
system, where you start with one and speak your way up into
astonishing large figures, or even just up into the millions, comes
quite late to *all* human languages. Clearly, the idea has been
borrowed (and sometimes improved upon) into nearly all languages.
Where it began is open to question.
The other point is that you have to understand the idea of 'a number'
as an abstration, and then build up a system for expressing all
numbers. The system we have is actually quite simple, just some
heavily contracted verbal addition.
Proto-World, or even proto-Indo-European lacked numbers in this sense.