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The Australian Aboriginal counting system was used to send messages on message sticks to neighbouring clans to alert them of, or invite them to, corroborees, set-fights, and ball games. Numbers could clarify the day the meeting was to be held (in a number of "moons") and where (the number of camps' distance away). The messenger would have a message "in his mouth" to go along with the message stick. A common misconception among non-Aboriginals is that Aboriginals did not have a way to count beyond two or three. However, Alfred Howitt, who studied the peoples of southeastern Australia, disproved this in the late nineteenth century, although the myth continues in circulation today. The systems below are those of the Wurundjeri (Howitt called them after their language, Woiwurung) and the Wotjoballuk. Howitt wrote that it was common among nearly all peoples he encountered in the southeast: ''"Its occurrence in these tribes suggests that it must have been general over a considerable part of Victoria''". As can be seen in the following tables, names for numbers were based on body parts, whose names themselves were metaphorical and often quite poetic: ==Wurundjeri counting system== :: Howitt writes "''from this place the count follows down the equivalent places on the other side, thus giving a considerable scope for enumeration.''" and would therefore allow numbers up to 31. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Australian Aboriginal enumeration」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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