Tallies are numbers, but the problem with them is that they get unwieldy with large numbers. So naturally, numerals were invented only when there was a need to precisely count large quantities.
Also, I recently read an article about how humans naturally count logarithmically, not linearly. So the use of tally marks is a revolution itself. Particularly if they are use to count past 4.
Please show me how any tally created prior to 3100 BCE represents more than a one-to-one correspondence between an event and a mark on the stick. Can you point to any occurrence of abstract counting prior to that time frame?