The movie The Clan of the Cave Baer (1986),
tells a story written in 1980 by Jean Auel.
The children 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 also reaching to 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 have been the
case: fingers and stone pebbles were used to visualize numbers. Then came
tallies and clay tokens