• CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 hours ago

    I refuse arabic numbers. What the fuck is 2? 7? 9??? These are all made up concepts invented to corrupt the mind of people.

    Look at how elegant these look instead: 10, 111, 1001.

          • GarboDog@lemmy.world
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            46 minutes ago

            We’ve said it 20 in Aztec Numerals times, our family will use a proper Aztec numbers just like our forefathers

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            It’s base 60 actually. With up to 5 𒌋 meaning 10 followed by up to 9 𒁹 meaning one. I actually should have put a space between the 60s place and the 1s place and formatted it as: 𒁹 𒌋𒌋𒌋𒌋

            It’s a lot easier to read in clay because you bunch the characters up within their place, and if it were used in modern day it would likely be autocorrected to make it easier

            • merc@sh.itjust.works
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              54 minutes ago

              Base 60 does make dividing evenly into 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, etc. really easy.

              If I were raised in China or something and used to memorizing / recognizing dozens or hundreds of symbols, then having individual symbols for the numbers 0 to 59 might be nice. But, as someone who only learned a 26 letter alphabet and 10 digits I like base 10 because it’s quick to parse a number.

              How did the Babylonians write 61? 6 𒁹 symbols, a space then a single 𒁹 ? Was it easy to tell the difference between say 21 and 3?

              • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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                19 minutes ago

                61 would be 𒁹 𒁹. Essentially the same way we write 11. It can be compared to 𒁹𒁹 meaning 2, which would appear bunched up as opposed to separated. Plenty of room for very large errors and I suspect if it’d stuck around you’d probably see something like a distinct 1, 9, 10, and 50 tallies to indicate “hey this is where this place begins” as well as a zero. For 21 it would be 𒌋𒌋𒁹, and for 3 it’s 𒁹𒁹𒁹.

                Cuneiform is a writing system highly constrained by its medium. It’s just pressing triangular reeds into clay. Any shape you can’t get out of that isn’t in the writing system. Using conjoined tallies makes sense for it.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_cuneiform_numerals

            • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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              2 hours ago

              yeah, seeing the symbols spread out across multiple characters makes it hard to tell whether that’s 100 or something else (considering i learned counting in cuneiform just this moment)

        • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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          40 minutes ago

          I is a finger. V is the line down your thumb and up the fingers (a whole hand). X is both your hands crossed… that’s one theory as to why they used “letters” for numbers.