The textual record of Mesopotamia hints at two minority number systems, or number systems associated with relatively small, non-dominant cultural groups. One of these possible minority systems counted by threes in a way that is comparable to contemporary counting systems from Papua New Guinea (Waskia and Bukiyip). Ternal numbers are found on some tablets from the Early Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian periods. A second possible minority number system may have been an eme-sal, a dialect of Sumerian spoken by women. Today, such gendered differences in language are found all over the world, with the possible exception of Africa. Eme-sal numbers are found in some Sumerian literary texts, where they were used to characterize certain speech as female in origin. Today, minority number systems are in danger of disappearing, for reasons that include replacement by number systems from dominant cultural groups or adoption as a way of maintaining parity in politics and trade. However, in these cases, the words for the smallest numbers—one, two, and three—are usually retained for reasons having to do with perception and memory.