I mean unless people had 6 fingers it would seem counter-intuitive to use any numbering system that does not have a base that is a multiple of 5. Or am I missing something?
In: Mathematics
The time system is very ancient, inherited from the ancient Mesopotamian empires that used a base-12 system instead of a base-10 system.
They preferred the number 12 because it’s a highly composite number divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 and you have 12 knuckles (minus the thumb) on one hand to keep count.
60 is 12×5, or a full hand of knuckle counts. 12 hours of day and 12 of night, and each hour is divided into a full hand of minutes.
There were attempts over the centuries to convert to a decimal time system, but none have unseated 4000 years of traditional timekeeping.
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