The movie The Clan of the Cave Baer (1986) tells a story written in 1980 by Jean Auel. The children’s story plays 25’000 years ago and addresses the earliest mathematics: the art of counting. It describes a stage even before writing tally marks. The protagonist of the movie, Ayla, has superior counting abilities. Her mentor Creb, an older member of the clan (who raises Ayla), teaches Ayla the numbers 3 and 5. Ayla quickly gets it. But reaching 10 is no problem for the girl, and Ayla quickly counts to 20, surpassing even the counting abilities of Creb. The scene also conveys what one believes has been the case: fingers and stone pebbles were used to visualize numbers. Then came tallies and clay tokens
