this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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Mildly Interesting
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The computer or spreadsheet idea is a bit ridiculous to me on account of even ancient humans could devise the same method in a smaller scale without the backbreaking 5,000 holes being dug. Every other idea presented by the article makes sense to me.
Ancient humans were kind of known for building things big af though. Pyramids, petroglyphs, henges.
Khufu’s pyramid has like 2 million blocks. 5000 holes is a rounding error.
Those were big because they had religious meaning.
That is very different from an accounting system, that is supposed to be practical.
Unless ancient humans were all Matt Parkers, it makes no sense to me that they'd make a gigantic counting system.
"Hey, we have 6 more livestock now"
"GATHER THE MEN, we're adding rocks to the hill!"
You're talking about a time that could be pre-numbering system so instead of "i have 6 sheep" it's more like "I have this many sheep" and you point to your hole which has 6 of whatever the thing is that they were using. maybe kernels of corn? Then you make sure you have one kernel for each sheep. But I'm just guessing.