5 fingers, 2x5 = 10 4 fingers, 2x4 = 8. Same for feet => 16 7 major joints on each side of the body, 2x7 = 14 "Explanations" of this kind "explain" what was

5 fingers, 2x5 = 10 4 fingers, 2x4 = 8. Same for feet => 16 7 major joints on each side of the body, 2x7 = 14 "Explanations" of this kind "explain" what was chosen, but offer no information about why it was chosen over all the other possibilities, and can always be easily adapted to "explain" the alternatives equally well, so in fact they tell us almost nothing. Whereas we know that heliacal rising stars were used to divide the night into six "double hours" (danna) by Sumerians which gave twelve divisions of the sky. This was based on lunar months, which are a unique--albeit approximate--source of the number 12, as opposed to anatomical speculations, which clearly are capable of generating just about any number you care to name. Furthermore, simply because knuckle-counting "just makes sense" to some modern humans does not do more than incrementally raise the plausibility of the claim that it was the source of the base-12 system in the ancient world. If you accept that the fact that it "just makes sense" to you is somehow compelling evidence for it, you have to accept that fact that it seems completely ridiculous to me counts as compelling evidence against it. The alternative--that I am an ignorant idiot and therefore my intuitions on this matter don't count--is... empirically untenable.