A lot of languages have their own numeral system, how did the arabic one become the most common?
In: Mathematics
Short story: people ditched the old roman system because it was a pain in the d8ck, and it just happened that arabs had a much idiot-friendly version that just needed some adjustments before being overall more convenient to widespread use. And because people aren’t retarded. Who the F would write 500, then add 100, then 50-10 more, then 5+3 and call it 648? DC XL VIII
Only the french do that shit, and it’s absolutely not useful.
Europeans widely used the Roman numeral system for many centuries, but if you’ve ever had to do work with it you’ll quickly see that it’s functionally retarded.
When the Europeans and Middle Easterners started getting into more prolonged contact during incursions into Spain and the resulting crusades, word of their much more elegant system made its way back into Europe.
When Europeans later sent naval traders all over the world, they brought this math with them.
Roman Numerals are not designed for performing mathematics, particularly not complex maths. So when the Arabic language found its way to European scholars, they were like “ooh, a much more convenient means of doing maths!”. And then it spread to East Asia, and they were like “ooh, a much more convenient means of doing maths!”. And as history progressed, the maths people wanted to do became more and more complicated, making the arabic system more and more convenient compared to the roman system.
Many traditional number systems (Roman, Chinese, etc.) are bad for math. The concept of number 0 was invented in India and adopted by the Arabs who brought it to Europe where it caught on. The Europeans then spread it wherever they went and now most developed countries use Arabic numerals, even if their own system still exists.
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