Sentence examples for numerals come from from inspiring English sources
Cardinal numerals come from Old English, as do all the ordinal numerals except second (Old English other, which still retains its older meaning in "every other day").
Over the last five years, I've been researching the question of where our numerals come from, including the Eastern (as contrasted with the older Maya) zero, which has taken me to Cambodia.
As early as the 3rd century bce, a second system of numerals, paralleling the Attic numerals, came into use in Greece that was better adapted to the theory of numbers, though it was more difficult for the trading classes to comprehend.
Specifically, they required participants to determine whether an Arabic numeral "was smaller or larger than 15" (quantity judgment) or instead whether the numeral "came before or after 15" (order judgment).
The number of seconds in a minute — and minutes in an hour — comes from the base-60 numeral system of ancient Mesopotamia.
While the oldest such zero comes from seventh-century Cambodia, and a slightly younger zero numeral was found in Pelembang, Indonesia, the numerals we use today originate in India.
That system probably comes from counting on our two five-fingered hands, but because it has a limited number of divisors, 10 is actually an inefficient number on which to build a numeral system.
