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Math is a Universal Language

The Romans, whose civilization is a great grandfather of most Western cultures, didn't have a concept for zero. Their numerical system looks to me like it probably arose from making tick marks for counting.

For tick marks, you make a straight line to record "1." For every instance counted, you make another straight line up to four. For the fifth instance, you make a diagonal line through the first four to group them together and for 6, you start a new group of straight lines. 

The Wikipedia article for tally marks has an illustration of what "5" looks like in tally marks. And here are what Roman numerals look like:

Roman Numerals 
1 = I
2 = II
3 = III
4 = IV
5 = V
6 = VI
7 = VII
8 = VIII
9 = IX
10 = X
11 = XI
20 = XX
50 = L
100 = C
500 = D
1000 = M

It was primarily a system for COUNTING and writing DATES (and their calendar had issues: October, our 10th month, translates as "month 8" and November, our 11th month, translates as "month 9"). They didn't have the advanced mathematics we have today. 

You can't really so much as multiply or divide using Roman numerals, much less develop algebra, trigonometry, etc. It's a primitive counting system that actively held back science because math and science are inseparable at higher levels.

Here is a history of zero. "Western math" took the concept of zero from India and also the Mayans independently invented the concept of zero.

The "Western numbers" you know are
Arabic numerals.

If you learn the history of math, a lot of words for basic math concepts come from real world things, like the times tables for multiplication, some of which I talk about elsewhere. 

Pythagoras, famous as the author of the Pythagorean Theorem -- which is A squared plus B squared equals C squared -- was believed to be a tile counter. If you search with the phrase "Pythagoras was a tile counter" you can get stuff like this Wikipedia piece on Pythagorean Tiling and this piece on Pythagoras from a site called Mathematicas Visuales.

If you search on "Pythagorean Theorem," you can get visuals showing the formula as patterns of tiles in square shapes around a triangle.  "Square numbers" just mean if you multiply a number by itself, the resulting answer is the number of tiles filling the square shape it makes. 

2x2=4  Four is the square of two.

3x3=9  Nine is the square of three. 

So these observations and the language describing them were likely rooted in grown men using floor tiles as math manipulatives like we give to children in elementary school.

If you are not a Lily White westerner and you imagine math is "western" brainwashing from your conquerors, you're wrong. 

Math borrows from many cultures and mathematical annotation is an attempt to come up with simple ways to describe reality which facilitate running complex calculations that can predict load bearing capacity or trajectories (etc) because it is more humane, efficient and productive to crunch some numbers than to build buildings and hope it doesn't fall down or hurl things into the air and see what flies and what crashes.

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