All research among uncivilized peoples has tended to confirm this view, were confirmation needed of anything so patent.

Occasionally some exception to this rule is found; or some variation, such as is presented by the forest tribes of Brazil, who, instead of counting on the fingers themselves, count on the joints of their fingers.[5] As the entire number system of these tribes appears to be limited to _three_, this variation is no cause for surprise.
The variety in practical methods of numeration observed among savage races, and among civilized peoples as well, is so great that any detailed account of them would be almost impossible.

In one region we find sticks or splints used; in another, pebbles or shells; in another, simple scratches, or notches cut in a stick, Robinson Crusoe fashion; in another, kernels or little heaps of grain; in another, knots on a string; and so on, in diversity of method almost endless.

Such are the devices which have been, and still are, to be found in the daily habit of great numbers of Indian, negro, Mongolian, and Malay tribes; while, to pass at a single step to the other extremity of intellectual development, the German student keeps his beer score by chalk marks on the table or on the wall.

But back of all these devices, and forming a common origin to which all may be referred, is the universal finger method; the method with which all begin, and which all find too convenient ever to relinquish entirely, even though their civilization be of the highest type.