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The reason why I ask this question is because of the pattern I've seen with
Japanese numbers. Once you have to repeat a number to describe itself, you get
a new unit. For example, 十十 = 百, 百百 = 万, 万万 = 億. So it seems that 千 is a
number that had some Western influence in its creation. Implying that it was a
number that created in more recent times (ie. the last 200 to 300 years). Am I
in the right direction with this pattern I'm seeing? Or is this just
coincidence?
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etymology numbers
Is 千{せん} a "current" number construct?
your theory breaks down at 億。 億億 != 兆 （兆 ＝ 万億） （億億 ＝ 京）

It would to be necessary to have every increment of power of 10 up until 10
000 under the Japanese system. Things would be akward without the 1000 unit as
well.

I do think it looks weird though when I see a number like 56000 written as
５万６千
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The Japanese number system (which I believe is derived from the Chinese one)
is pretty similar to the western one (just to call it something), except it
breaks at every 4 digits instead of every 3 digits.

Japanese:

> 0-9999 兆 0-9999 億 0-9999 万 0-9999

English:

> 0-999 billion 0-999 million 0-999 thousand 0-999

(assuming you're from a part of the English speaking world which doesn't use
milliards or "thousand million"s).

The confusing thing about the Japanese system, though, is that when written
with digits, it still puts commas at every third digit. This is most likely
from western influence.

Slightly off topic, but...

Your idea is interesting, since it would be theoretically possible to have a
number system where digits break in a "binary" fashion:

0-99999999 億 0-9999 万 0-99 百 0-9 十 0-9

I don't know if any language breaks digits in this way, though.
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