That's pretty cool. I always thought that the big-endian way we write numbers feels backward, I guess that explains it
The quoted sentence still holds for Arabics, as RTL language has different concept of "first" than LTR ones. :-)
That indeed adds up. In old Sanskrit texts numbers are spelled out in words, units place first then the higher powers of tens. Arabs took the system but it had never occurred to me what caused the switch in endian order.
Your comment made me dig out my BHS, since i had not counted in Hebrew since my Masters 20 years ago. Biblical Hebrew also spells out numbers, but in a slightly mixed order of the 2 systems: six and forty thousand and five of hundreds (Num 1:21), nine and fifty thousand and three of hundreds ( 1:23 ).
Funny trivia: while the Arabs wrote the numbers exactly as we do, they actually wrote them in the opposite order, the least significant digit first, and continued in ascending order, because Arabic script is actually written right-to-left. We the Europeans borrowed the notation as it looked when finished being written, so it had the unfortunate side effect of switching to the unnatural big-endian order.