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You obviously haven’t lived in ancient Babylonia. (Pro tip: different cultures have done things differently across time and space!)
by garmaine 7y ago
You obviously haven’t lived in ancient Babylonia.
(Pro tip: different cultures have done things differently across time and space!)
- jacobolus 7y agoI have not seen any evidence that ancient Mesopotamians counted phalanges using their thumbs. I believe that counting method was devised by some fan of duodecimal arithmetic sometime within the past century, and has nothing to do with sexagesimal numeration per se.
- garmaine 7y agoIt’s visually built into the cuneiform: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_numerals https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_numerals
- jacobolus 7y agoIf that is your evidence then you are tricking yourself, or to be generous speculating wildly. The evolution here was: physical clay counters; physical clay counters sealed in a clay envelope; physical clay counters sealed in a clay envelope but also pressed into the outside of the envelope to indicate how many; clay tablet with counters pressed into the outside (since the envelopes with counters inside were redundant); clay tablets with little cuneiform symbols to represent quantities, differing by type of object being counted, and not all sexagesimal; more uniform written sexagesimal writing system. There is no indication in the symbols about how people counted on their fingers.