Why Base 60?

 

First possible reason why the Babylonians could have chosen a sexagesimal system is that 60 has a lot of factors, so it was easier to express as fractions as we discussed in class. Another possible benefit of using 60 as the base for a number system instead of 10 is that it can save up space when writing numbers down to for record purposes. As we learned in class, the Babylonians used place values unlike other ancient civilizations such as Roman or Chinese, and their method of recording was not as easy compared to modern paper or of course digital. Therefore, they may have wanted to fit as much as number as possible within limited space, and using base 60 would have been more efficient choice than base 10.

 

In the modern society, there are several occasions where we use 60 as the base number of certain system. Most commonly seen systems are when we keep time there are 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute, and an angle in an equilateral triangle is 60 degrees and we say that one full turn is a 360 degrees. In Korea, it is not commonly used anymore, but 60 years were called Gabja. (I only know this because there is a famous folktale of a guy who cheated death and lived for 3000 Gabja which would be 18000 years), so 60 was commonly used in as base number for certain systems across different cultures that probably did not have any interactions. This is possibly due to the fact that there are approximately 360 days in a year and maybe there are 6 different periods of year for different farming processes.