Dr. Irving Finkel

Oh yes.

They are all numbers.

So the half ones are 10.

Right.

And the others are one or 60, but there are more subtle ones as well.

And as the script developed, and this script is developed to a long way, it's written not with a point, but with a stylus.

Once you get to this stage...

The writing of numbers and the concomitant numerical system kept pace with it so that literacy and numeracy, as you would say if you were running a primary school, at the beginning of history evolved together.

And many things about that are remarkable because, for example…

It's shown and established from the beginning of the study of this material that the Mesopotamians, the Sumerians first, and then the Assyrians and Babylonians, they had a mathematical system which was sexagesimal.

That is to say, their convenient starting point on which everything was plastered was the number 60.

Okay.

And mathematicians...

tell me that 60 is more flexible and more useful than 10.

But of course, 10 is the natural thing because, barring accidents, people have 10 digits, and everybody in the world counts on their fingers.

So one might assume, although anthropologists or mathematicians will probably throw up their hands in horror at such a simplistic argument,

But you might say that the counting's intent was intrinsic to the human brain.

And in fact, you can burn me at the stake and I'll never give up that argument.

But the decimal system at the very earliest level chronologically in this long evolving story was limited to certain materials.

So there were things like barley, which are measured in 60s, and other things measured in 10s.