Origin and Development of the Sexagesimal System of Numeration

Bibliographic Data

ID3967926
AuthorsHildegard Lewy (corresponding author)
Year1949
Volume69
Issue1
Pages1
Publication date1949-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/595393
OpenAlexW2316262254
LanguageEN
Citations received5

In a study entitled Sketch of a History of the Sexagesimal System,1 Thureau-Dangin expressed the opinion that ' the sexagesimal system had been the common and exclusive mode of numeration with the Sumerians, that is with the predecessors of the Babylonians.' 2 He based this opinion upon the evidence that the oldest written records hitherto excavated in Babylonia make use of the sexagesimal mode of numeration. Yet, he was forced to admit that the system of measures occurring in these archaic texts is not based on the sexagesimal system. Such a divergency between the numeral and the metrological system of a nation is not a unique occurrence. In measuring time, for instance, all modern peoples adhere even today to the Babylonian sexagesimal system which has been abandoned for about two thousand years as a mode of numeration. There are further certain current Anglo-Saxon measures which, being subdivided in accordance with the Latin duodecimal system,8 likewise perpetuate an obsolete mode of numeration. Judging by these modern analogies, one might be tempted to conclude that the SumeroBabylonians received their measures from a foreign population much as we inherited our measures of time from the Babylonians and the duodecimal

Algorithm · Ancient history · Arithmetic · Genealogy · Mode (computer interface) · Numeral system · Population · Sketch · Sociology · Computer Science · Demography · History · History and Theory of Mathematics · Mathematics

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