How do we know this? Well if they had really found that the system presented them with real ambiguities they would have solved the problem – there is little doubt that they had the skills to come up with a solution had the system been unworkable. The context made it clear, and in fact despite this appearing very unsatisfactory, it could not have been found so by the Babylonians. The numbers sexagesimal numbers 1 and 1,0, namely 1 and 60 in decimals, had exactly the same representation and now there was no way that spacing could help. In the number 1,1 there is a space between them.Ī much more serious problem was the fact that there was no zero to put into an empty position. In the symbol for 2 the two characters representing the unit touch each other and become a single symbol. However, this was not really a problem since the spacing of the characters allowed one to tell the difference. Since two is represented by two characters each representing one unit, and 61 is represented by the one character for a unit in the first place and a second identical character for a unit in the second place then the Babylonian sexagesimal numbers 1,1 and 2 have essentially the same representation. Now there is a potential problem with the system. This is because the 59 numbers, which go into one of the places of the system, were built from a 'unit' symbol and a 'ten' symbol. Now although the Babylonian system was a positional base 60 system, it had some vestiges of a base 10 system within it. However, rather than have to learn 10 symbols as we do to use our decimal numbers, the Babylonians only had to learn two symbols to produce their base 60 positional system. Now of course this comment is based on knowledge of our own decimal system which is a positional system with nine special symbols and a zero symbol to denote an empty place. Often when told that the Babylonian number system was base 60 people's first reaction is: what a lot of special number symbols they must have had to learn. Here are the 59 symbols built from these two symbols
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