What special meaning did base 60 have to the Babylonians at that time? Were 60 tribes nearby? Was 60 is the amount in their money system?
In our daily life, we use the number 60 as a unit in the time-telling system. (60 seconds = 1 minute, 60 minutes = 1 hour). We also use 60 to make reference to the degrees of a circle (360).
By doing some resarch online, I found some interesting facts about the Babylonian Mathematics and the base 60 system.
- Babylonians adopted the number 60 as base possibly because it has more divisors than any smaller positive integers.
-The Babylonian math system did not have zero.
-The Pythagorean theorem we use today is based on Babylonian math multiplication formula.
(Gill, 2020)
In another article by Sweeney, he notes that "the Chinese or Egyptian culture have developed elaborate and highly accurate divination systems to predict the future, all based on Base 60". People in ancient China would predict the best times for planting and harvesting crops based on the traditional Chinese calendar which has some connection to the number 60. Sweeney also mentions the Pisano Periodicity, which indicates that "nature has a law that living things develop to the fullest to the number 60. "
For those who are intersted, here are the links to the two articles/
https://www.thoughtco.com/why-we-still-use-babylonian-mathematics-116679
https://vixra.org/pdf/1407.0062v1.pdf
Sukie, the connection you made planting and harvesting crops and the Chinese calendar is interesting. I am curious about the divination system based on 60 and Pisano Periodicity. Maybe you will have a chance to explore these further.
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