5 ms·

I one little sentence, you answered a lifelong question. Why 60? Thank you!

• sshumaker 6y ago
  60 has nice properties, in that it is evenly divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30. Helpful as a base since you can divide it into smaller units easily (monetary, measurement, etc).
  • dragonelite 6y ago
    Funny i just started reading(half way through, its a hard book to read) Micheal Hudson book "...And forgive them their debts" talks about bronze age economics etc and debt forgiveness and how their number base was usually taken for interests calculations.
    • WorldMaker 6y ago
      The Babylonian Base-60 also obviously survives in a lot of circle measurements: degrees, minutes:seconds. While the metric system has mostly moved on to radians, metric proponents (and esp. the French Revolution) failed to find a base-10 time system that people could agree on that matches the convenience of Base-60 minutes:seconds.