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If humans were born with 6 fingers on each hand we would be using base 12 instead of the decimal system. (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by migvelio@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[-] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There's also evidence of an early base-12 system in use for some Indo-Europeans -- it's likely why the English morphology doesn't become compositional until 13:

Ten (not compositional)

Eleven (not compositional)

Twelve (not compositional)

Thirteen (related to three-ten)

Fourteen (relates to four-ten)

Etc.

[-] mySFWaccount@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Cool! I never really thought of it that way.

this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
149 points (93.6% liked)

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