Culture with the fewest numbers

The Pirahã tribe, who live in the Amazon region of Brazil, South America, speak one of the strangest languages in the world – comprising a very small number of basic sounds, or ‘phonemes’ as they’re known, and leading to conversations made up of primitive whistles, hums and squeaks. But the Pirahã vocabulary is special for another, far more important reason – namely that it has no numbers, leaving the Pirahã unable to count (although they do have comparative expressions for ‘more than’ and ‘less than’). Theirs is not the only language like this, but whereas other linguistically innumerate societies (such as Australia’s aborigines) borrow number systems from other languages, the Pirahã seem to show no interest whatsoever in learning to count.