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Looks like they had 3 fingers per hand, so base 6 seems a likely choice. 6 works great as its divisible by 2 and 3. I wonder what base we would use if we (some
by 8organicbits 6y ago
Looks like they had 3 fingers per hand, so base 6 seems a likely choice. 6 works great as its divisible by 2 and 3.
I wonder what base we would use if we (somehow) had a prime number of fingers. 2, 6, 30, 60?
- jsilence 6y agoOnly on HN...
- cryptoz 6y agoBut what you call base 6 they might call base 10 every base is is base 10...from a certain perspective
- masklinn 6y ago> Looks like they had 3 fingers per hand, so base 6 seems a likely choice. Depends how they use their fingers and whether they use other body parts. There is evidence for human cultures having ranged from 4 to 10, 12, 16, and 20 (technically there are higher ones but they usually have sub-bases in that range). You can count to 12 on a single hand (24 on two hands) by pointing phalanges with the thumb for instance. Some native cultures had base 8 using the space between the fingers rather than the fingers themselves.
- jhardy54 6y agoOpinion: Highly composite numbers make good bases. 2, 6, 12, 60, etc Number of fingers doesn't matter, although you can shoehorn almost any base into them. For example, base 6 lets you count to 5 on one hand and use your other to coujt multiples of 6. This lets you count to 35 on two hands. More info here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_nu...
- learnstats2 6y agoetc: 360 is a useful number of days for a calendar system
- def8cefe 6y agoThey may have 10 of something else...
- jackcosgrove 6y agoThe ancient Sumerian number system was base 6. Our units of time are still based on that. 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours.