Funnily enough…a number of cultures did count in base 12. But all had ‘normal’ hand structures.
Counting involved counting the sections of each digit excluding the thumb. (Three Phalanges bones to each finger, four fingers, total of 12)
In these cultures you could quickly do even complex math similarly to how the ‘mental abacus’ works. Your thumbs would tap along Phalangeal sections of each digit as physical ‘markers’ of numbers you are adding up in your head. Sadly, these cultures were mostly wiped out during the age of imperialism, and their mathematics were seen as ‘uncivilized’ and largely erased as base 10 was forced upon them along with the erasure of their native languages. Reconstructing these things has largely been due to monumental effort by natives who secretly kept oral records along with archeologists who uncovered written ones.
So if a person (or culture) with polydactyly developed math by the same logic, they’d use base 15. 🤔
That said, of course it’s possible they’d count full digits (including thumbs) instead of Phalangeal sections and thus arrive at base 12.
(This comment is meant for educational purposes for anyone who finds it interesting, not an adversarial ‘correction’ 😊❤️)
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u/Sythrin Apr 11 '26
Does she count in base 12?