Why Babylon used the 60 number base system

When doing the in-class exercise analyzing the Babylonian mathematics system, I was initially very confused about what the different symbols they used represented. However, after spending some time looking at the symbols and comparing them to the next multiple, I found out that they used a base-60 system. I wondered why they did this, as a base 10 system seemed much simpler to me, so I decided to do some research on it.

I found out that this was likely due to the fact that there are 5 fingers on one hand and five multiplied by twelve equals sixty. I think that the number sixty is special because it has twelve factors compared to ten which has 3, therefore it has more divisors. Sixty is significant for many things in our daily lives, but especially for how we keep time. It is a good number to use for time-keeping and many other things because of the number of divisors it has. I never really noticed our usage of the number 60, but doing this exercise has opened my eyes to exactly how much we use it in our daily lives.  The number 60 also has numerous meanings as it comes up many times in the bible as well as its symbolism in our culture.

By doing additional research, I also found out that the multiples of 12 are also due to the usage of counting on your hand. Your fingers are split into three sections, and by counting on each finger you can achieve a count of 12. I had never even realized this and was shocked when I read it online. I found it very interesting to see how people thousands of years ago did math and found the comparison of the two base-systems to be quite fascinating.

Comments

  1. AmandaDecember 17, 2019 at 10:26 PM

    You have lots of relevant information here, but you missed the initial speculative part of the questioning.

    ReplyDelete

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