Babylonian priests observed the precise locations of the planets, the moon, and the sun on the celestial sphere. It has been speculated that the reason for the use of a base-60 system was due to astronomy and astrology. It is the only culture of the world where such a large base number was chosen. It is most interesting that the Sumerians and the later cultures in Mesopotamia used a sexagesimal numeral system, which means that the base of the numeral system was 60, rather than the base-10 that we are all quite accustomed to in our daily lives. It is from these clay tablets that we know about Babylonian science. Among them, about four hundred have mathematical content or deal with mathematical problems. From the innumerable clay tablets that were created by Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians, at least half a million tablets have survived until today. When the Akkadians conquered Sumer in about 2300 BCE, the two cultures merged, and the Sumerian writing system came into use everywhere in Mesopotamia, where the Babylonian empire soon emerged. Gradually, the number of different symbols was reduced, and the cuneiform writing became less pictographic and more and more phonological, with symbols describing the sounds and syllables of the spoken language. The name cuneiform means, in fact, “wedge-shaped” (Latin cuneus, or “wedge”). In the often-flooded areas between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, there was plenty of clay available, and the Sumerians formed clay tablets, engraving symbols with a wedge-shaped tool in the still-soft clay. The cuneiform script was developed from the first versions of writing using pictographic symbols. Also, writing was needed to facilitate administration that had become very complex, so that human memory alone became insufficient. It was probably developed to organize economic processes and record them in durable form. The first towns and cities there were built by the Sumerians more than five thousand years ago, and it was there that the earliest known writing in history appeared. The first highly developed culture was in the land of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia (today's Iraq). Chapter 3: Numbers in Historyģ.1.NUMBERS IN BABYLON-THE FIRST PLACE-VALUE SYSTEM IN HISTORY Numbers: Their Tales, Types, and Treasures.
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