Babylonian numbers

Summary
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Creation
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System
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Advantages vs disadvantages
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Annex
 Creation
People a long time ago used their hands to count and it was enough for
what they did. Then about 6000 years ago they learned how to plant
crops and tame animals so they began trading and counting to get
records of deals.
They used clay as token formed as circles, ovals, etc to figure out what
they bought. For example a circle meant a jar of oil.
Later on a person started to just mark the clay with figures to count
instead of cutting out token, and the others just copied him and
Babylonians numbers were created like this in -3500 BC.
 System
The first symbols were circles
and cones like the tokens, but
after learning how to sharpen
their pens they made a cones
with sharp wedges.
The figures are simple to
understand even thought it’s
pretty confusing.
Unlike ours, babylonian numbers
were a « mixed notation ».
This means that the placement of
the figures changes the meaning
of it.
They also had no zero.
 Advantages vs disadvantages
Advantages :
●
It’s easy to learn because there is almost no symbols to learn.
●
Made trading a main part of babylone and made farming easier.

Disadvantages :
●
The major drawback is that we can’t know if the writer meant 60 or 1 if
the symbol is alone. (Symbols in annex)
●
Another equivalent is that we can’t count much not even thousands.
Annex