Can You Count Without Number Words? Cognitive neuroscientist Edward Gibson traveled to a remote Amazon village to confirm previous research by anthropologist and linguist Daniel Everett (2005, 2008) that showed the Pirahã people lacked the ability to count and had no comprehension of numbers. Gibson found that rather than identifying quantities by exact numbers, the Pirahã research participants used only relative terms like “few,” “some,” and “many.” According to Gibson, the Pirahã are capable of learning to count, but did not develop a number system because numbers are simply not useful in their culture (Frank & others, 2008).