Why did the Babylonians use a base 60 number system?(galileo-unbound.blog)

3 pointsby just_humanvor 10 Monaten1 comments

Why did the Babylonians use a base 60 number system?

https://galileo-unbound.blog/2024/10/22/counting-by-the-waters-of-babylon-the-secrets-of-the-babylonian-60-by-60-multiplication-system/

1 comments

just_humanvor 10 Monaten

No one knows why the Sumerians (later Babylonians) used base 60, but the leading theory is that 60 is highly divisible for a smaller number, making it much easier to do fractions and square roots by hand.

Also interesting, YAML supported base 60 in earlier versions (not sure why? possibly because easier to represent time?), but it was later dropped: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal?utm_source=chatgpt...