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up vote 35 down vote favorite 9 This joke was supposed to be funny: A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers and shouts "Five beers, please!" But disregarding the funniness, it made me actually think about the real system or systems that they did use. The evidence I found so far is from quite old sources and inconclusive, only pointing at reconstructions at what they might have used. Roman numerals are even said to have originated from hand-gestures for counting, according to one hypothesis. Alfred Hooper has an alternative hypothesis for the origin of the Roman numeral system, for small numbers. Hooper contends that the digits are related to hand gestures for counting. For example, the numbers I, II, III, IIII correspond to the number of fingers held up for another to see. V, then represents that hand u