Ishango Bone

Hello. I am very old and very small. I am about as long as a grown-up’s finger. I am dark and smooth, but if you look closely, you can see I am covered in little scratches. These scratches are my secrets. What am I? I am a special tool from long, long ago. I am the Ishango Bone. I am a very special bone with a big story to tell. I come from a time so long ago that there were big, woolly mammoths walking on the earth.

More than 20,000 years ago, someone sat by a sunny lake in Africa. They held me, a bone from a baboon, and used a sharp stone to carve little lines on my sides. Scratch, scratch, scratch. They carved three lines, then six. Then four lines, then eight. Each scratch was a way of counting things. Maybe they were counting the fish they caught in the lake. Maybe they were counting the nights until the moon was round and bright. I helped them remember. I was one of the very first calculators in the whole world.

I slept under the ground for thousands and thousands of years. It was a very long nap. Then, a man found me in the year 1950. He gently brushed the dirt off and saw my special scratches. He knew I was important. I am not just an old bone; I am an idea. I show how smart people were, even long, long ago. I am a little whisper from the past, reminding you that counting, thinking, and wondering are some of the oldest and most wonderful games we humans play.