This chapter considers how skilled adult literacy and numeracy relates to other cognitive domains such as visual recognition and spoken language. The debate around whether there are specialized regions for recognizing printed letters, numbers, and words is covered. Beyond visual recognition, there is assumed to be two brain-based routes for reading: one involving phonetics and one involving semantic memory. This is discussed from developmental, neuroimaging, and cross-cultural perspectives. With regards to numerical cognition, evidence is presented that semantic representations for number are distinct from other kinds of words and that this reflects an evolutionary \u201cstart up kit\u201d for an approximate understanding of numbers. An exact understanding of number may be supplemented, in humans, by language and cultural inventions (e.g., written number systems). <\/p>\n\n\n\n