• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Base 60 does make dividing evenly into 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, etc. really easy.

    If I were raised in China or something and used to memorizing / recognizing dozens or hundreds of symbols, then having individual symbols for the numbers 0 to 59 might be nice. But, as someone who only learned a 26 letter alphabet and 10 digits I like base 10 because it’s quick to parse a number.

    How did the Babylonians write 61? 6 𒁹 symbols, a space then a single 𒁹 ? Was it easy to tell the difference between say 21 and 3?

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      61 would be 𒁹 𒁹. Essentially the same way we write 11. It can be compared to 𒁹𒁹 meaning 2, which would appear bunched up as opposed to separated. Plenty of room for very large errors and I suspect if it’d stuck around you’d probably see something like a distinct 1, 9, 10, and 50 tallies to indicate “hey this is where this place begins” as well as a zero. For 21 it would be 𒌋𒌋𒁹, and for 3 it’s 𒁹𒁹𒁹.

      Cuneiform is a writing system highly constrained by its medium. It’s just pressing triangular reeds into clay. Any shape you can’t get out of that isn’t in the writing system. Using conjoined tallies makes sense for it.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_cuneiform_numerals

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        5 hours ago

        It seems to me that with a reed you could also underline something or draw a slash between items, so you could do 𒁹 / 𒁹 for 61 vs 𒁹 𒁹 for 2.