• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Was it really base-60? Like “10” in Babylonian was 60 and they had 59 individual symbols for the digits lower than that? If so, that’s a lot of digits to learn.

    • LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      To represent a number using Babylonian Cuneiform Numbers, you choose a symbol to represent 10 ((2*2*2)+2) and a symbol to represent 1, and you create them combined in groups that are summed together to represent numbers up to 59 (10+10+10+10+10+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1). When one group is to the left of another, the group to the left represents a number that is 60 times greater than it would if the group to its right hadn’t been created. A symbol representing a group that sums to 0 was sometimes used.

      The Numberphile channel created videos on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR3zzQP3bII https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9m2jck1f90

    • JTPorkins@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’ve almost got it right, but in the opposite way. “10” in Babylonian would just be one character. They would have a different character for every number 0-59 and at 60 it would become two characters.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I think you misunderstood what I was saying. “10” in hexidecimal is 16 in decimal, so I was wondering if “10” in Babylonian was 60 in decimal, and they had 59 digits like (0-9, A-F, G-Z, ???)