My guess is because we say them in big endian: "five thousand two hundred five"

As to why we say them in big endian, I am less sure.. Could it be because we go for important stuff first? "This costs five hundred two..." "-OK, that's too much"

(this stack exchange answer seems to agree: [0])

[0] https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3038638/why-do-we-o...

> Why do we write numbers backwards? I don't know why we do it that way.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness