Monks Invented a Secret Numerical System BETTER THAN OURS!

In 1991, a rather special Astrolabe was sold at Christie's Auction House in London. An Astrolabe is an ancient astronomical device used for calculating the altitude of a celestial body above the horizon, or for identifying stars and planets, or for triangulation and surveying purposes. What made this one special, were the mysterious symbols that were engraved on its surface. Historian David. A. King had seen similar symbols before on a Medieval manuscript and so began a study into their meaning and origin.

It was discovered that the strange symbols were an ancient numeric system previously unknown to most Mathematical and medieval historians. King found that the system originated from some simple notes which were brought back from Athens by a monk called John of Basingstoke early in the 13th century, it was then evolved by Cistercian Monks throughout the 13th century and by the end of it, the system was used in monasteries all over Europe.

The Ciphers of the monks consist of a vertical stave upon which horizontal lines are drawn on either side, top or bottom to depict a number from 1 to 9. The way to read the number is bottom left is thousands, bottom right is hundreds, top left is tens and top right is units. The great advantage of "Monks ciphers" over Roman Numerals and indeed our own system is that this one symbol can be used to show 4173. in Roman Numerals you need 11 symbols and with the modern system you need 4.

So how come we don't use this system today? Well, as with the Roman system, the Ciphers of the monks don't lend themselves to multiplication or division, also whereas it was important to use fewer symbols when you had to carve them in stone, it became less important when you could just write or print them.

So just as this system was gaining popularity over Roman Numerals, the modern numeric system overtook them both and left the Roman Numerals a place in the history books and the "Monk's Ciphers" buried in the past.

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