Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the student’s ...

Archaeologists working in northern Mesopotamia say they have uncovered visual patterns that look a lot like structured counting, even though no written numerals existed at the time. The claim is bold: ...