Part IV. The Part of Tens
In this part . . .
Roughly 5,000 years ago, the people known as the Sumerians used a sexagesimal numbering system. Instead of using our familiar base 10 system, the Sumerian notation had 60 as its base.
It was a hard life. The Sumerian equivalents of David Letterman's writers wrote dozens of jokes for each night's Top 60 List. And imagine watching Charlton Heston play the hero Gilgamesh in a 20‐hour movie entitled The Sixty Commandments!
Keep all this in mind as you read the next few chapters, and be glad the Sumerians aren't still around.
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