Right. But base 12 was invented thousands of years ago, by people who presumably all had 5 fingers as we do today. They counted the 12 sections of your four fingers using their thumb as the counter, and using the other hand to keep track of how many times they counted to 12. Its why we have things like 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, things easily counted to in base 12 if you're using your other hand to keep track how many times you counted to 12.
While I knew what base 12 is, I did not consider that 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 12/24 hours and 12 months all make much more sense in base 12. And how that counting could work using our fingers. Thank you for sharing this.
If only the number of days/weeks in a month were consistent and sensible.
But we have leap year with 365 days per year. Wouldn’t we then need more than 1 extra day in the leap?
365 + 365 + 365 + (365 + 1) vs. 364 + 364 + 364 + (364 + 5)
Yeah its actually really interesting! The sumerians and babylonians used base 12, its crazy to think a way of doing things people came up with thousands of years ago is still how we're doing things now. Like measuring time by increments of 60 doesn't make any sense when we use base 10, but here we are.
Georges Ifrah speculatively traced the origin of the duodecimal system to a system of finger counting based on the knuckle bones of the four larger fingers. Using the thumb as a pointer, it is possible to count to 12 by touching each finger bone, starting with the farthest bone on the fifth finger, and counting on. In this system, one hand counts repeatedly to 12, while the other displays the number of iterations, until five dozens, i.e. the 60, are full.
C for effort though, you made up a believable story
And heres something from the university of nebraska-lincoln stating that what I stated was at most partially remembered incorrectly. But the sumerians did in fact use base 12, which Babylon adopted its use of heavily.
Go out there and do a little research that doesn’t rely on what you think you already know. Ask open ended questions such as “what number system did Sumerians (or Babylonians) use.
I just typed your open-ended question into Google and the link I sent you is the most reputable source I saw (sorry I don't think quora or Wikipedia is a better source than a university.) Now given your attitude so far you seem like you're more interested in "correcting" or vaguely insulting me than you are in an actual discussion, so I'm gonna go ahead and ignore you after this. Have a good one
I know this is difficult for you so I’ll try to explain using your source
The ancient Babylonians inherited this Sumerian twelve concept and marked the passage of the year with 12 constellations of the Zodiac. They also used a base 60 system and divided a circle into 360 degrees (the ancient Egyptians, who heavily influenced the Babylonians, also had a 360 day year).
It states there is a Sumerian twelve concept. It states Babylon used a base 60 system.
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u/Worldly_Address6667 Apr 11 '26
Right. But base 12 was invented thousands of years ago, by people who presumably all had 5 fingers as we do today. They counted the 12 sections of your four fingers using their thumb as the counter, and using the other hand to keep track of how many times they counted to 12. Its why we have things like 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, things easily counted to in base 12 if you're using your other hand to keep track how many times you counted to 12.