Nit pick: only in few human languages the ordinal numbers start at 1.

In most modern languages, the ordinal numbers start at 2. In most old languages, and also in English, the ordinal numbers start at 3.

The reason for this is the fact that ordinal numbers have been created only recently, a few thousand years ago.

Before that time, there were special words only for certain positions of a sequence, i.e. for the first and for the last element and sometimes also for a few elements adjacent to those.

In English, "first", "second" and "last", are not ordinal numbers, but they are used for the same purpose as ordinal numbers, though more accurately is to say that the ordinal numbers are used for the same purpose with these words, as the ordinal numbers were added later.

The ancient Indo-European languages had a special word for the other element of a pair, i.e. the one that is not the first element of a pair. This word was used for what is now named "second". In late Latin, the original word that meant "the other of a pair" has been replaced with a word meaning "the following", which has been eventually also taken by English through French in the form of "second".

Not true in general, ordinal numbers start at 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number