New Guinea is home to an astonishing number of distinctive numerical systems. Distinctive numbers and counting systems are shibboleths, ways of signaling group affiliation and identity and protecting cultural boundaries. One distinctive method of counting is body-counting, which uses the body as a tally. Body-counting involves the fingers, but in between the two hands, counting proceeds up the arm, up and across the neck and head, and down the other side to create counting cycles like 23 or 27. Before Western education and currency were introduced, body-counting was limited to counting up (or accumulating) an ordinal sequence. Since the body-tally and associated verbal names for the numbers are both ordinal sequences, they are mutually reinforcing in a way that influences the method toward long-term stability. Body-counting often co-exists with one or more alternative methods, including digit-tallying (counting the fingers and/or toes), binary counting (counting by pairs), and quaternary, senary, or duodecimal counting (groups of four, six, or twelve). Together, these methods lack the between-sequence coherence found in the object-specified counting of Polynesia or ancient Sumer.