Fun Fact: The babylonians used a base 6 (really, base 60) system. We still see echoes of this with 360 degrees in a circle (invented by Babylonians) as well as

Fun Fact: The babylonians used a base 6 (really, base 60) system. We still see echoes of this with 360 degrees in a circle (invented by Babylonians) as well as 60 minutes in an hour, 12/24 hours in a day, etc. Even the 7 day week is viewed as a 6 day work week plus an extra day for ceremonies (A "Sabbath" was invented by the Babylonians as well, although in a different form than the Jewish Sabbath - the Babylonian Sabbath barred work on the seventh day because it was considered unlucky). The theory is they did this because of their hands, but used one hand to count digits and the other hand to count groups of digits: for each of the 4 fingers they are divided into 3 segments. When you are counting, you can point to the four fingers with your thumb, thus giving 12 and a pointer to which finger you are on. Then in your other hand you can keep track of how many units of 12, so 5*12 = 60. A base 60 system. But there was no digit for zero, although of course they had a way of dealing with zero, it was just not considered a number.