Blog Response #2: Why Base 60?

My first guess as to why 60 might be convenient was because there are 360 degrees (6x60 and similar to 60^2) and about 6 radians in a circle. However, 60^2 is 3600, not 360 and there are not exactly 6 radians in a circle. I started to think about what is naturally around us such as the self, nature, and systems we have in place. We have 10 fingers and 10 toes, unless maybe back then they only had 6 fingers and toes! Nothing about our physiology seemed to spark an answer. In nature I think primarily about the rotation around the sun (360 degrees), the shape of other planets (circles, 6 radians, 360 degrees), and systems like time (such as days of the year, seconds per minute, minutes per hour, 12 months in a year, 30 (6x5) days in a month). 

We still use 60s in time like mentioned above and in length measurements (12 inches in a foot) which both make up a large part of how we think. We revolve our lives around the sexagesimal time system. 

In my research I found that there is also a strong presence of 60s in the Chinese calendar. I was also surprised to find that this system is in fact likely rooted in physiology, and the fingers more specifically (even though it wasn't because people had 6 fingers). According to (Gill, 2019), some theorize that two groups who had two different number systems based off of 12 and 5 came together and traded between each other. This resulted in them using a 60 base number system so both could understand it. The base 5 was likely to have originated from counting on the 5 fingers, while the base 12 was likely to originate from counting the metacarpal and two phalanges on each of their four fingers (not including the thumb which was likely used as a pointer). 

References

Gill, N. S. (2019, July 3). Why the 4,000-year-old babylonian math base 60 system is still used. ThoughtCo. Retrieved September 14, 2021, from https://www.thoughtco.com/why-we-still-use-babylonian-mathematics-116679.