[excursionist]

Set theory constructs the natural/ordinal numbers from it's axioms, but set theory is a man-made formal language that didn't exist until the 19th century, so talking about what comes/before after is kind of moot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number

[mikorym]

It not about historical order, it's about the order in which you need things to build upon mathematically.

[excursionist]

You don't need set theory for numbers, enumeration or arithmetic.