60’s pretty handy, imagine dividing the spoils of war, the inheritance in a large family, or the grain on a farm evenly by 60, 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 recipients.
Dead simple in base 60.
We have no trouble thinking of a quarter hour as 15 minutes, although we don’t actually think of it, we just know it.
Dead simple in base 60.
We have no trouble thinking of a quarter hour as 15 minutes, although we don’t actually think of it, we just know it.
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Ah, true! Don’t know why I didn’t think of 60 minutes in an hour, which we are use to. Although come to think of it, this has the implication that their base 60 system and our 60 minutes in an hour might have a common ancestor.
Wonder how that number 60 was arrived at. Interesting to think about. We could have, seemingly, used 10 “minutes” in an “hour” and 10 “hours” in a day, but somehow we have 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day. Gets kind of mysterious when you stop to think about it.