BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s

Subject: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 10:28 AM

Johnny Ball - a mathematician/commedian, who does a lot to popularise maths in the young, explained why the duo-decimal system came into being.

The Babylonians counted with their fingers and counted down the bones/joints. Hence 12. The thumb being not so easy to include and 14 or 15 does not divide so conveniently. However the other hand had five digits so counting to 60 was easy with two hands. But their 360 day year was not a commercial brand. The Chinese astronomers got to 365 days which stymied their polar trigonmetry for 3000 years.

My guess is that if a Babylonian wanted to sign a meeting time he could point to the appropriate finger/bone. Can any Babylonian scholars out there confirm this.

And how did they teach the Baby lonians in school - and what happened during daylight saving time? Surgery?

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 10:52 AM

How about adjustable daylight savings time so it always get dark at 9 PM.

fewer mosquito hours, less street lights, less crime,




Of course the sun would rise in the afternoon at Christmas time.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 10:55 AM

If you are making a dial, then, having drawn a circle, the easiest number of divisions to make on it is 6. Just keep your compasses, or loop of string, or whatever, the way it was, and march around the circumference. And, while you're at it, it's easy to bisect each of those divisions -- just continue the arcs outside the circle, and later lay a straightedge between the intersections and the center of the circle, and tick off the odd 12ths on the circumference.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Live and learn. Die and forget it all. :||

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 11:21 AM

I doubt this explanation.

The Mayan Calendar had 20 day chunks, 20 weeks of 13 days each (260); the Nahuatl calendar worked in 52 year chunks.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 11:27 AM

Some interesting remarks on the Incan calendar system from this site on Incan civilization.

..The Inca had a calendar based on the observation of both the Sun and the Moon, and their relationship to the stars. Names of 12 lunar months are recorded, as well as their association with festivities of the agricultural cycle.

There is no suggestion of the widespread use of a numerical system for counting time, although a quinary decimal system, with names of numbers at least up to 10,000, was used for other purposes. The organization of work on the basis of six weeks of nine days suggests the further possibility of a count by triads that could result in a formal month of 30 days.

A count of this sort was described by Alexander von Humboldt for a Chibcha tribe living outside of the Inca Empire, in the mountainous region of Colombia. The description is based on an earlier manuscript by a village priest... The smallest unit of this calendar was a numerical count of three days, which, interacting with a similar count of 10 days, formed a standard 30-day month.

Every third year was made up of 13 moons, the others having 12. This formed a cycle of 37 moons, and 20 of these cycles made up a period of 60 years, which was subdivided into four parts and could be multiplied by 100. A period of 20 months is also mentioned. Although the account of the Chibcha system cannot be accepted at face value, ...it is suggestive of devices that may have been used also by the Inca.

In one account, it is said that the Inca Veracocha established a year of 12 months, each beginning with the New Moon, and that his successor, Pachacuti, finding confusion in regard to the year, built the sun towers in order to keep a check on the calendar. Since Pachacuti reigned less than a century before the conquest, it may be that the contradictions and the meagerness of information on the Inca calendar are due to the fact that the system was still in the process of being revised when the Spaniards first arrived.

Despite the uncertainties, further research has made it clear that at least at Cuzco, the capital city of the Inca, there was an official calendar of the sidereal-lunar type, based on the sidereal month of 27 1/3 days. It consisted of 328 nights (12X271/3) and began on June 8/9, coinciding with the helical rising (the rising just after sunset) of the Pleiades; it ended on the first Full Moon after the June solstice (the winter solstice for the Southern Hemisphere). This sidereal-lunar calendar fell short of the solar year by 37 days, which consequently were intercalated. This intercalation, and thus the place of the sidereal-lunar within the solar year, was fixed by following the cycle of the Sun as it strengthened to summer (December) solstice and weakened afterward, and by noting a similar cycle in the visibility of the Pleiades.


...

Regards,


A

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 01:28 PM

I used to sell fabric. A visiting Asian once asked my why we Americans used yards, not meters. I thought about it for a minute, then pointed out that given 36 inches, one can easily divide the fabric into two, three, four, six, eight, nine, twelve, eighteen or thirty-six equal parts. This is not relevant for clothes, but no doubt was a factor in making linens, quilts, rugs and other products.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: jacqui.c
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 01:33 PM

I always thought there were twenty-four hours in the day......

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 01:54 PM

That depends on how big you make your hours, I think....

A

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: sixtieschick
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 03:28 PM

Would someone please wake me up when all this relativity and linear misperception of reality is over and the past, present and future coalesce into eternal oneness?

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 04:03 PM

I think, sixtieschick, that occurs at the moment you no longer wake up. ;o)

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Jul 05 - 11:59 AM

If we wake you up half an hour too late, it will have all coalesced into half-past-oneness.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Peter T.
Date: 12 Jul 05 - 02:07 PM

I also recall that the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar is nigh, like in 2016.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: sixtieschick
Date: 12 Jul 05 - 04:13 PM

Please don't wake me,
No, don't shake me
Leave me where I am,
I'm only sleeping.

Trouble is, the fine print says that you keep on waking up over and over again to a slap on the rear from yet another OB doc or midwife or neighborhood crone or the like until you finally awaken from the dream of samsara and get the hell off of the wheel of maya. Or is it that you awaken from the dream of maya and get the hell off the wheel of samsara.

Either way, how do I get out of this chickenshit outfit? Reincarnation is exhausting--and such a bummer.

M.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 12 Jul 05 - 04:21 PM

Next time the White Rabbit runs by, ask him the way out.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 13 Jul 05 - 01:20 PM

ObSongs: When I was little, I mastered the hour hand on the clock somewhat before penetrating the mysteries of the minute hand. Thus, if the hour hand was pointing at 3, I could tell it was 3 o'clock, but if it was not pointing at any number, I did not know what to say. I solved that problem by choosing a special name for those odd times: clementime, which I had heard about in the song, "Oh, my darling clementime".

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: If one hair cannot make the difference between a beard & no beard, then no-one has a beard. :||

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 14 Jul 05 - 07:40 AM

leeneia - I think the first measures were taken from different parts of the body. Reading your post I checked my right index finger; it is about 3'. 12' is 1"; the name foot tells where the measure was taken from.
And the length of a yard was determined by an English king who stretched out his arm and said: this is a yard. The rest is harmonizing. Before the definition of one weight and measure in England every community had them with the same name, but slight differences.
Here, too, the doudecimal system prevailed in earlier times.
The same it is with the old money systems. 12 pence to the shilling correspond very well with the 12 silver Pfennige to the Groschen in Charlemagne's realm.

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jul 05 - 08:53 AM

jacqui.c

In Baylonia one must assume there were 12 hours in a day and 12 in a night (roughly) as they are not that far off the equator and it probably felt that way around mid June to Hezikia (pedants feel free to shoot me down in a hail of Assyrian arrows)

And why did we end up with a 12 hour clock? It was just my guess but a mighty enticing one.

The duo-decimal concept was Babylonian. so was 60. and we still have 60 minutes and seconds. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The Yard was the length of King George's nose to finger tips. The Mad one.

Anyone remember what L.s.d was? Lira, (schilling?), and denaria
Now that is a legacy from Roman times but how many Roman denaria to the (?) and thence to the Lira?

And the Germans count, von by von..........................

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 14 Jul 05 - 09:31 AM

And the Jews, Yidl by Yidl.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: One ship, and you can be a pirate; a thousand, and you can be an emperor. :||

Subject: RE: BS: why there 12 hours in a day - & 60s
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 14 Jul 05 - 10:05 PM

Heck! And here I thought the duo-decimal system came from the Betelgeusians, not the Babylonians. I mean everybody knows Betelgeusians have twelve fingers...