On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Colin Putney wrote:

>
> On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 02:22 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
>
> > And now that we got this let's go back to the roots for real. Why do we
> > actually write numbers big-endian? ;-)
>
> Well, actually we write them little-endian in a right-to-left script.
> Whoever stole arabic numerals from the arabs apparently didn't bother
> to do the required digit-swapping when using them with the Roman
> alphabet. Perhaps it was because Roman numerals were big-endian.

... except that I thought "arabic" numerals originated in India, and most
Indian scripts are left to right.