# How were number symbols derived/shaped up?

This question was sitting on my to do list for sometime. So, as I was reading a book on history of science, I came across of a paragraph where the author attempted to give a historical development about "how we got the symbols that we use today for the numbers 1 to 9?"

He started with 1 saying that humans would represent 1 with a stick on the ground which eventually has been drawn, let's say, in the sand, and reached us in the form we know it.

Next, 2 was represented with two horizontal sticks (ex: =) and, by drawing it, the fast hand connected the right end of the upper stick with the beginning of the left end of the lower stick, giving as the 2 that we know.

Something with 3...3 parallel sticks...fast hand drawing transformed it into our 3. And that's where the author stopped the story!

Does anyone know the rest of the story for the rest of the symbols, if there is one?

PS: Feel free to change the title of the post if you think that is not suggestive enough!

• This "origin theory" is completely made up, even Wikipedia gives a more accurate account. The original Indian symbols looked different, and their adaptations by Arabs produced multiple variations, none of them related to stick shapes or some other pictorial ideas. – Conifold Dec 1 '20 at 1:29
• A good book may help, see K.Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols: A Cultural History of Numbers – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 1 '20 at 10:54