Ishango Bone
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The Ishango bone is a tally stick, made of bone, which contains 3 sequences of grouped carvings. The bone was found in the area of what are now the headwaters of the Nile River. The bone has three rows of notches, with the row a) below having 2 sets of numbers in excess-one format, base 10: 9,19, 21,11. Row b) is a descending series of prime numbers from 19; row c) continues the series of prime numbers, down to 5; row c) then contains multiples of 3, 4 and 5, in an example of Egyptian multiplication.
- Rows of tally notches below:
| (a) | 9 | 19 | 21 | 11 | ||||
| (b) | 19 | 17 | 13 | 11 | ||||
| (c) | 7 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 3 |
Originally from Africa, this artifact now resides at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium. The bone is dated from around 18,000 BC.
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