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There was an American culture that had like a base 27 or something where you started counting at the tip of one hand and went through the hand, up the arm, over the head, down the arm to the other hand. But yeah your hands are why most number systems have had a similar base.
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Aug 7, 2017 04:51
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Squalid posted:If languages tend to lose difficult consonant clusters where do they come from in the first place? Is it just that they don't start out difficult but only become so as the language changes, or do languages actually trend towards actual simplification? I'm not an expert, but: Because vowels get weakened and lost as well, and sometimes this results in consonant clusters. Sometimes these consonant clusters are really annoying to pronounce, and that leads to potentially DIFFERENT vowels being added in potentially DIFFERENT places. Just as sometimes consonants fall out which leads to vowels landing next to eachother in annoying ways so new consonants get added. Also, sometimes consonants (and vowels) just kinda show up, like people who like vanillar and want to visit Warshington
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Aug 7, 2017 05:01
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Arglebargle III posted:Hmmmm yeah why would humans preference 5 and 10 in their number systems hmmmmmmm I wonder why there apparently was no culture (to the best of my limited knowledge anyway) that developed positional counting schemes for your hands though. With base 2 you can easily count to 31 on one hand which isn't half bad.
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Aug 7, 2017 07:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Squalid posted:If languages tend to lose difficult consonant clusters where do they come from in the first place? Is it just that they don't start out difficult but only become so as the language changes, or do languages actually trend towards actual simplification? "Difficult" is very language-dependent, so I don't think it's worthwhile to make sweeping statements like that
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Aug 7, 2017 09:57
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I know Reddit isn't very well liked on this forum but this is actually a good read that really deconstructs the image of Sparta https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rvusy/is_the_military_worship_of_the_spartans_really/ .
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Aug 7, 2017 10:22
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Askhistorians is a really good subreddit that is worth visiting.
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Aug 7, 2017 10:23
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PittTheElder posted:I wonder why there apparently was no culture (to the best of my limited knowledge anyway) that developed positional counting schemes for your hands though. With base 2 you can easily count to 31 on one hand which isn't half bad. What would that accomplish?
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Aug 7, 2017 12:56
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PittTheElder posted:I wonder why there apparently was no culture (to the best of my limited knowledge anyway) that developed positional counting schemes for your hands though. With base 2 you can easily count to 31 on one hand which isn't half bad. Doing actual arithmetic on your hands like that is trickier than 'this is this many things'. Plus they would have to figure out negative numbers - sign/magnitude, ones complement or twos complement? 
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Aug 7, 2017 13:03
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Arglebargle III posted:What would that accomplish? What does it accomplish, that several languages are known to not count beyond 5 or 8 or whatever? Human languages and cultures don't seem to need practicality to do things.
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Aug 7, 2017 13:12
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FAUXTON posted:I'm liking the repeated acknowledgements that historical record is more or less contained to "things people gave a gently caress about" and that we want to try not to think of the Germanic tribes as uncivilized since they (at least their aristocracy) had a standard of living equivalent to Romans. Is living standard the equivalent of being civilized, though? For example, what if you own a hundred slaves and a big house and you use silverware but you can't read and the art you enjoy is rudimental?
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Aug 7, 2017 14:55
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Doctor Malaver posted:Is living standard the equivalent of being civilized, though? For example, what if you own a hundred slaves and a big house and you use silverware but you can't read and the art you enjoy is rudimental? What says that reading and physical art are the signifiers of civilization?
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Aug 7, 2017 15:05
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Me 
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Aug 7, 2017 15:14
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Arglebargle III posted:What would that accomplish? I mean personally I use twelve per hand counting to count things, because I often need to count more than ten, or twenty five things.
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Aug 7, 2017 15:44
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/07/firefighters-arrested-in-sicily-for-starting-blazes-to-earn-extra-money crassus spotted
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Aug 7, 2017 15:59
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PittTheElder posted:I wonder why there apparently was no culture (to the best of my limited knowledge anyway) that developed positional counting schemes for your hands though. With base 2 you can easily count to 31 on one hand which isn't half bad. Fingers don't work like that. Your middle and ring finger work on the same muscle so it's very hard to move them independently. Cyrano4747 posted:What says that reading and physical art are the signifiers of civilization? Well there's all these jerks writing books who are somewhat biased about writing.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:16
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PittTheElder posted:I wonder why there apparently was no culture (to the best of my limited knowledge anyway) that developed positional counting schemes for your hands though. With base 2 you can easily count to 31 on one hand which isn't half bad. 32 if you don't have the concept of zero! 
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Aug 7, 2017 17:39
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Why count in anything other than base 2?
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Aug 7, 2017 17:55
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i hate you all right now
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Aug 7, 2017 17:55
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fantastic in plastic posted:Why count in anything other than base 2? I think base 8 is the best base and we should only use that one. Also, and completely unrelated, I think White Space is the only programming language we should use. The amount of ink we could save on print outs alone is worth it. 
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Aug 7, 2017 18:03
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PittTheElder posted:I wonder why there apparently was no culture (to the best of my limited knowledge anyway) that developed positional counting schemes for your hands though. With base 2 you can easily count to 31 on one hand which isn't half bad. See p.167. https://pgmagirlscouts.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/saracen_archery.pdf
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Aug 7, 2017 18:14
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It might surprise you to learn that you can count to 30 in base 10 as well.
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Aug 7, 2017 18:40
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have you ever gone out to eat with other historians and gotten to the part where everyone splits the bill and tips at the end of the night? historians can't do math
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Aug 7, 2017 18:42
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SlothfulCobra posted:Fingers don't work like that. Your middle and ring finger work on the same muscle so it's very hard to move them independently. I know they're on the same muscle, but they are not hard at all to move independently. If they were nobody would be able to past two or three on their hands the regular way.
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Aug 7, 2017 18:43
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JaucheCharly posted:See p.167.  Holy poo poo 
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Aug 7, 2017 19:05
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Didn't Sumerians count to 60 on their hands counting their knuckles which is where our things like an hour having 60 minutes in it etc came from
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Aug 7, 2017 19:05
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PittTheElder posted:I know they're on the same muscle, but they are not hard at all to move independently. If they were nobody would be able to past two or three on their hands the regular way. Don't blame him too much, its hard enough for him to type with no arms.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:07
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EX250 Type R posted:Didn't Sumerians count to 60 on their hands counting their knuckles which is where our things like an hour having 60 minutes in it etc came from I linked a page about that above. It's a system of counting to 12 on the knuckles of one hand. It's the probable origin of the concept of a dozen and a gross, because it's easy for merchants to count stuff visibly, and numbers like 12 and 60 have lots of tidy factors.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:10
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China has one handed gestures for numbers through ten, useful when haggling with someone with an impenetrable dialect. Six and up are supposedly based on the respective characters but I don't really see the resemblance.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:12
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PittTheElder posted:I know they're on the same muscle, but they are not hard at all to move independently. If they were nobody would be able to past two or three on their hands the regular way. I don't know what kind of hand tendons you have, but I can't get the ring finger up anymore than halfway with the middle down, and that's with the thumb available to keep the middle down. HEY GAIL posted:have you ever gone out to eat with other historians and gotten to the part where everyone splits the bill and tips at the end of the night? historians can't do math I have succeeded on this day.
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Aug 7, 2017 20:17
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HEY GAIL posted:have you ever gone out to eat with other historians and gotten to the part where everyone splits the bill and tips at the end of the night? historians can't do math I watched a room full of historians try to figure out how old Ludwig Erhard was when the Nazis came to power. He was born in 1897. The words "oh, it's one of those one where you have to borrow" were heard.
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Aug 7, 2017 20:44
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my dad posted:
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Aug 7, 2017 21:26
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P-Mack posted:China has one handed gestures for numbers through ten, useful when haggling with someone with an impenetrable dialect. Six and up are supposedly based on the respective characters but I don't really see the resemblance. SlothfulCobra posted:I don't know what kind of hand tendons you have, but I can't get the ring finger up anymore than halfway with the middle down, and that's with the thumb available to keep the middle down. I learned the Chinese hand counting because you basically have to when you are living in a Chinese speaking country. It's just assumed that everyone can do it and understands it. They've never really considered the idea that a foreigner wouldn't be familiar with it. The thing of it is, growing up with the system, basically everyone can move their fingers into the correct positions since they've been doing it since birth. Having only learned it in the last few years as an adult, I find it making the position for 9 very difficult on my left hand and nearly impossible on my right. So basically my point is that if you have trouble contorting your hand into weird shapes, it's largely because you didn't grow up with it and it's much less of a problem if you've had decades to train your muscles to move in weird ways.
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Aug 8, 2017 01:46
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Cyrano4747 posted:What says that reading and physical art are the signifiers of civilization? Wikipedia's definition mentions writing systems and monumental architecture.
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Aug 8, 2017 19:44
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Doctor Malaver posted:Wikipedia's definition mentions writing systems and monumental architecture. Wikipedia's definition may be bad.
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Aug 8, 2017 19:48
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For a mod, that's some rather low effort posting.
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Aug 8, 2017 21:07
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Doctor Malaver posted:For a mod, that's some rather low effort posting. Ah, I see, you are attempting the Heroquest "Doctor Malaver gets half his face burned off" Make sure you don't get lost on the godplane, amigo.
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Aug 8, 2017 21:26
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Doctor Malaver posted:For a mod, that's some rather low effort posting. For an adult, that was a rather stupid post.
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Aug 9, 2017 02:29
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Ugh send one of them on a campaign to Belgica this is tedious.
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Aug 9, 2017 02:43
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Doctor Malaver posted:For a mod, that's some rather low effort posting. Did you just cite Wikipedia then complain about someone else's effort in posting? That takes some real cajones or however you say them in Latin. Some real hadrians feller fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Aug 9, 2017 |
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Aug 9, 2017 05:06
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If there's one thing I can still clearly remember from taking anthropology class, it's that a civilization is, in a nutshell, any society that has densely-populated permanent settlements or "cities" (and the complex government and infrastructure necessary to support them, of course), and that being civilized essentially just means that ones lives in a city, with the other, now-more-common definitions (being well-behaved, having refined tastes, etc.) being implications that grew out of that basic definition.
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Aug 9, 2017 06:17
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