![Medieval tally sticks](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Medieval_tally_sticks.jpg)
A tally stick (or simply tally) was an ancient memory aid device used to record and document numbers, quantities and messages. Tally sticks first appear as animal bones carved with notches during the
Upper Palaeolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...
; a notable example is the
Ishango Bone
The Ishango bone, discovered at the "Fisherman Settlement" of Ishango in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a bone tool and possible mathematical device that dates to the Upper Paleolithic era. The curved bone is dark brown in color, about 10 ce ...
. Historical reference is made by
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...
(AD 23–79) about the best wood to use for tallies, and by
Marco Polo
Marco Polo (, , ; 8 January 1324) was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in ''The Travels of Marco Polo'' (also known as ''Book of the Marv ...
(1254–1324) who mentions the use of the tally in China. Tallies have been used for numerous purposes such as messaging and scheduling, and especially in financial and legal transactions, to the point of being
currency
A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins.
A more general def ...
.
Kinds of tallies
![SAM PC 1 - Tally sticks 1 - Overview](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/SAM_PC_1_-_Tally_sticks_1_-_Overview.jpg)
Principally, there are two different kinds of tally sticks: the single tally and the split tally. A common form of the same kind of primitive counting device is seen in various kinds of
prayer beads
Prayer beads are a form of beadwork used to count the repetitions of prayers, chants, or mantras by members of various religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Umbanda, Islam, Sikhism, the Baháʼí Faith, and some Christian denominati ...
.
Possible palaeolithic tally sticks
A number of anthropological artefacts have been conjectured to be tally sticks:
*The
Lebombo bone The Lebombo bone is a bone tool made of a baboon fibula with incised markings discovered in the Lebombo Mountains located between South Africa and Eswatini. Changes in the section of the notches indicate the use of different cutting edges, which the ...
, dated between 44,200 and 43,000 years old, is a
baboon
Baboons are primates comprising the genus ''Papio'', one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow baboon, the Kinda baboon and the chacma ba ...
's
fibula
The fibula or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. Its upper extremity is ...
with 29 distinct notches, discovered within the
Border Cave
Border Cave is a rock shelter on the western scarp of the Lebombo Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal near the border between South Africa and Eswatini. Border Cave has a remarkably continuous stratigraphic record of occupation spanning about 200 ka. ...
in the
Lebombo Mountains
The Lebombo Mountains, also called Lubombo Mountains ( pt, Montes Libombos), are an , narrow range of mountains in Southern Africa. They stretch from Hluhluwe in KwaZulu-Natal in the south to Punda Maria in the Limpopo Province in South Africa in ...
of
Eswatini
Eswatini ( ; ss, eSwatini ), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland ( ; officially renamed in 2018), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its no ...
.
*The so-called ''Wolf bone''
( cs) is a prehistoric artefact discovered in 1937 in
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
during excavations at
Vestonice,
Moravia
Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
The me ...
, led by
Karl Absolon. Dated to the
Aurignacian
The Aurignacian () is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic
associated with European early modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic developed in Europe some time after the Levant, where t ...
, approximately 30,000 years ago, the bone is marked with 55 marks which some believe to be
tally mark
Tally marks, also called hash marks, are a unary numeral system ( arguably).
They are a form of numeral used for counting. They are most useful in counting or tallying ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, as no intermediate r ...
s. The head of an ivory
Venus figurine
A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.Fagan, Brian M., Beck, Charlotte, "Venus Figurines", ''The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'', 1996, Oxford University Press, pp. 740–741 Mos ...
was excavated close to the bone.
*The
Ishango bone
The Ishango bone, discovered at the "Fisherman Settlement" of Ishango in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a bone tool and possible mathematical device that dates to the Upper Paleolithic era. The curved bone is dark brown in color, about 10 ce ...
is a
bone tool
In archaeology, a bone tool is a tool created from bone. A bone tool can conceivably be created from almost any bone, and in a variety of methods.
Bone tools have been documented from the advent of '' Homo sapiens'' and are also known from ''Ho ...
, dated to the
Upper Palaeolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...
era, around 18,000 to 20,000 BC. It is a dark brown length of bone. It has a series of possible
tally mark
Tally marks, also called hash marks, are a unary numeral system ( arguably).
They are a form of numeral used for counting. They are most useful in counting or tallying ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, as no intermediate r ...
s carved in three columns running the length of the tool. It was found in 1960 in Belgian Congo.
Single tally
The single tally stick was an elongated piece of bone, ivory, wood, or stone which is marked with a system of notches (see:
Tally marks
Tally marks, also called hash marks, are a unary numeral system ( arguably).
They are a form of numeral used for counting. They are most useful in counting or tallying ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, as no intermediate ...
). The single tally stick serves predominantly
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
purposes. Related to the single tally concept are messenger sticks (used by, e.g., Inuit tribes), the knotted cords, ''khipus'' or ''
quipu
''Quipu'' (also spelled ''khipu'') are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America.
A ''quipu'' usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people u ...
s'', as used by the
Inca
The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The admin ...
.
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known f ...
(c. 485–425 BC) reported the use of a knotted cord by
Darius I of Persia
Darius I ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his d ...
(c. 521–486 BC).
Split tally
The split tally was a technique which became common in medieval Europe, which was constantly short of money (coins) and predominantly illiterate, in order to record bilateral exchange and debts. A stick (squared hazelwood sticks were most common) was marked with a system of notches and then split lengthwise. This way the two halves both record the same notches and each party to the transaction received one half of the marked stick as proof. Later this technique was refined in various ways and became virtually tamper proof. One of the refinements was to make the two halves of the stick of different lengths. The longer part was called ''stock'' and was given to the party which had advanced money (or other items) to the receiver. The shorter portion of the stick was called ''foil'' and was given to the party which had received the funds or goods. Using this technique each of the parties had an identifiable record of the transaction. The natural irregularities in the surfaces of the tallies where they were split would mean that only the original two halves would fit back together perfectly, and so would verify that they were matching halves of the same transaction. If one party tried to unilaterally change the value of his half of the tally stick by adding more notches, the absence of those notches would be apparent on the other party's tally stick. The split tally was accepted as legal proof in medieval courts and the
Napoleonic Code (1804) still makes reference to the tally stick in Article 1333. Along the
Danube
The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...
and in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
the tally was still used in the 20th century in rural economies.
The most prominent and best recorded use of the split tally stick or "nick-stick" being used as a form of currency
was when
Henry I Henry I may refer to:
876–1366
* Henry I the Fowler, King of Germany (876–936)
* Henry I, Duke of Bavaria (died 955)
* Henry I of Austria, Margrave of Austria (died 1018)
* Henry I of France (1008–1060)
* Henry I the Long, Margrave of the ...
introduced the tally stick system in medieval England in around 1100. He would accept the tally stick only for taxes, and it was a tool of the
Exchequer
In the civil service of the United Kingdom, His Majesty’s Exchequer, or just the Exchequer, is the accounting process of central government and the government's ''current account'' (i.e., money held from taxation and other government reven ...
for the collection of taxes by local sheriffs (tax farmers "farming the shire") for seven centuries.
The system of tally marks of the Exchequer is described in ''
The Dialogue Concerning the Exchequer'' as follows:
The cuts were made the full width of the stick so that, after splitting, the portion kept by the issuer (the ''stock'') exactly matched the piece (the ''foil'') given as a receipt. Each stick had to have the details of the transaction written on it, in ink, to make it a valid record.
![TNA gates](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/TNA_gates.JPG)
Royal tallies (debt of the Crown) also played a role in the formation of the
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...
at the end of the 17th century. In 1697, the bank issued £1 million worth of stock in exchange for £800,000 worth of tallies at par and £200,000 in bank notes. This new stock was said to be "engrafted". The government promised not only to pay the Bank interest on the tallies subscribed but to redeem them over a period of years. The "engrafted" stock was then cancelled simultaneously with the redemption.
The split tally of the Exchequer remained in continuous use in England until 1826. In 1834 tally sticks representing six centuries worth of financial records were ordered to be burned in two furnaces in the
Houses of Parliament
The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north bank ...
. The resulting fire set the chimney ablaze and then spread until
most of the building was destroyed.
This event was described by
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
in an 1855 article on administrative reform.
[Charles Dickens, "Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, ]
Speeches literary and social by Charles Dickens
' (1870) pp.133–4. Tally sticks feature in the design of the entrance gates to
The National Archives
National archives are central archives maintained by countries. This article contains a list of national archives.
Among its more important tasks are to ensure the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both ...
at
Kew
Kew () is a district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its population at the 2011 census was 11,436. Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is a ...
.
See also
*
Bamboo and wooden slips
Bamboo and wooden slips () were the main media for writing documents in China before the widespread introduction of paper during the first two centuries AD. (Silk was occasionally used, for example in the Chu Silk Manuscript, but was prohibit ...
*
Bamboo tally
*
Chirograph
A chirograph is a medieval document, which has been written in duplicate, triplicate or very occasionally quadruplicate (four copies) on a single piece of parchment, with the Latin word ''chirographum'' (occasionally replaced by some other term) ...
: a similar system for creating two or more matching copies of a legal document on parchment
*
Fu (tally)
Fu () was a tally, which was used as a proof of authorization in ancient China, which typically consists of two parts. Generals would use the fu as an imperial authorization for troop movements and for other purposes while amongst the populace, i ...
*
Measuring rod
A measuring rod is a tool used to physically measure lengths and survey areas of various sizes. Most measuring rods are round or square sectioned; however, they can also be flat boards. Some have markings at regular intervals. It is likely tha ...
*
Prehistoric numerals
Counting in prehistory was first assisted by using body parts, primarily the fingers. This is reflected in the etymology of certain number names, such as in the names of ''ten'' and ''hundred'' in the Proto-Indo-European numerals, both contain ...
Notes
References
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Further reading
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External links
Photo of Medieval Exchequer TalliesThe Dialogue Concerning the Exchequer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tally Sticks
Mnemonics
Writing systems
Mathematical tools
Money
Currency
Bone carvings