Several interesting finger-counting systems were documented in Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In some, gestures were used instead of number-words. In others, gestures were accompanied by words, either the names of the numbers displayed by the fingers or expressions drawing attention to the fingers as they displayed numbers. Occasionally the number-word and accompanying gesture did not match, with the gesture providing the intended meaning. These uses suggest that finger-counting precedes names for numbers and helps lengthy names for numbers to shorten to unanalyzable words. Some finger-counting is symmetrical, involving the same number of fingers on both hands to express numbers (for example, six would be displayed as three fingers on each hand), while other finger-counting is sequential, using all the fingers on one hand before adding fingers on the other (in this case, six would be displayed as five fingers on one hand and one finger on the other). The Maasai use conventional gestures, finger-patterns for numbers whose meaning cannot be understood as the number of fingers displayed; conventions enable this system to express very high numbers.