According to The Guardian (20 August 2004), “Researchers claim to have solved the mystery of the people who simply do not count. It could be because they are lost for words.” A study of a small, isolated hunter-gatherer tribe from the Amazon has shed light on the enduring puzzle of whether people can conceptualize numbers without having the language to describe them.

The Pirahã tribe has a counting system of only a few words: “one” (which can also mean “roughly one”), “two” and “many”. Reporting in Science, Peter Gordon of Columbia University described that when asked to do a series of simple, non-verbal number-matching tasks with familiar objects (such as sticks, nuts and small batteries), “the ability of tribesmen to do [the tasks] faltered beyond two or three” (The Telegraph, 20 August 2004).

Gordon claims that his work supports Whorf's hypothesis from the late 1930s that language not only influences thought but can determine the way in which we think. Lisa Feigenson, a psychologist from Johns Hopkins University, hailed the study as “fantastic” and argued that “language must be causing the 'drastic' difference in the number sense of the Pirahã” (The Telegraph).

Brian Butterworth, a neuroscientist at University College London, finds the results surprising. Speaking to The Guardian, he said, “It has been known for 50 years that birds can match sets of up to about seven. So I find it very strange that these Pirahã adults are unable to do these tasks.”