Counting evolved in the Ancient Near East from early Neolithic use of clay tokens for accounting purposes. By the end of the fourth millennium BC tokens in ancient Iraq, tokens began to be impressed onto clay tablets leading to a proto-cuneiform form of early writing at such sites in as Jemdet-Nasr.

Signs in this early writing included "systems of numeration" or series of measure units for calculating specific kinds of commodities much as traditional 'inch, foot, yard' do for length measurement and 'pint, quart, gallon' for liquid measures. The proto-cuneiform nexus of counting and writing proliferated in ancient Mesopotamia with the rise of cities, trade, and new crafts. Studies of early economic developments in the Ancient Near East in fact underlie new ways to look at the origin of writing, accounting, and counting.

Michael Fowler's Counting in Babylon sets this mathematical evolution in a general historical and scientific context, and David Joyce gives a History of Mathematics by Region, including useful links to pages on Babylonian mathematics on other sites.

Knowing that counting evolved in historically attested stages in ancient Mesopotamia, calls for re-assessments of the old view that the preliterate Proto-Indo-Europeans had a decimal system at a time when counting was evolving with literacy in Mesopotamia. Early pre-numerate systems of Mesopotamia in fact have similarities with well-known numeral systems such as the traditional Germanic long hundreds; see Justus' online article and subsequent publications on numerals with references to related work.

Quite independently work on the early origins of European (ethno-)mathematics suggests that a septarian European league based on geodetic measurements preceded knowledge of a sexagesimal system for measuring the earth. See Roslyn Frank's study of European prehistory and the septarian vara de Burgos.