Babylon on Your Wrist and Wall

The base-ten number system we use has not been used by many cultures around the world. Some use base-five because of the number of fingers on a hand. The Babylonians, experts at mathematics, used base-sixty because 60 was conveniently divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 10,12,15,20,30. It is from the ancient Babylonian number system that we get 24 hours in a day (twice twelve astrological houses in the night), 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. Longitude and latitude are also measured in minutes and seconds with a complete circle having 6X60=360 degrees.

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