h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Counting numbers are very interesting. We take them for granted.

We have made counting very orderly by only using one base system. Base ten. Not base 10.

10 doesn’t signify ten. It signifies totality of base. Because we only use base 10 in everyday affairs, 10 does signify ten most of the time.

But watch…

Originally, the numerals had meaning. Count the angles. 1 has one angle. The old two looked like Z and it has two angles. The old three looked like a sideways W and it has three angles. When the crossbar of a 4 doesn’t extend across the vertical bar, it has four angles. The old 5 was squared off and it has five angles. Likewise the 6 was squared off and has six angles. The old seven had a crossbar, a hook on the front and a tail, and seven angles. The old eight looked like the Greek H with the top and bottom closed, eight angles. The nine was squared off and had a crossbar on the vertical line, nine angles. And so we arrive at ten. The numeral ten will be a single digit numeral with ten angles. A star works.

Now let’s consider the 10. This double digit numeral has an infinite number of names because there are an infinite number of base systems, and 10 means totality of base. 100 means totality of square. 1000 means totality of cube. Unless you are sure of the base system involved, you cannot be sure of ‘how many’ things we are counting.

We already know they used more than one base system. When you properly count in a base system, and if your numerals increase in angles until you reach totality of base, 10, then you need 59 single digit numerals and a positional 0 for base 60.

This brings up the point that an alphabet can be used to indicate numerals. I haven’t found a single digit numeral with 59 angles, so either they added the angles in a word, or they used another system.

After all, the Mayans only have three numerals in their counting system and it’s supposed to be base twenty. So with a dot, a bar and a ‘shell’ for zero, they use a base twenty system. They didn’t need 19 single digits and a positional zero. However, the system has a base 5 underlying system. The bar is said to equal 5 dots.

However, I’m not sure they always used base twenty.

If the dot means a single digit, the bar means totality of base 5 and the shell is zero, then all you have to do to increase bases is to make the bar worth another amount. See what I mean.

I wonder about the Bible. In Genesis, there are 6 days of work and one day of rest. That’s base seven with a positional zero. But Methusala lived to be 969 and that is base ten or above. So if the Bible was originally base seven, and it is now base ten, then something changed. If the Bible was never base seven, at least the calendar was base seven. Our calendar is built on a grid of base seven extended.

The Dead Sea Scrolls said there was a problem with the Old Hebrew Calendar. Apparently, they set up the year on a base seven schedule, but it wasn’t in accordance with the actual solar year, which caused the growing season to be wrong over time.

Another peculiarity of the system was that if you were born on a Monday, your birthday would always be on a Monday. This leads me to believe that they added a leap week to their year, which was already divisible by seven. That would allow your birthday to always be on the same day.

But there’s more. The original Hebrew year had Passover as the 14th day of the first month. What that means is that Passover will always fall on the Saturday Sabbath, because that is how they counted the week. Passover would always fall on Saturday the 14th. Well, that one day after Friday the 13th. Hmmm.

Another Hebrew thing is that you can’t gather food on the Sabbath. So the sacrifice for Passover must be gathered on Friday the 13th.

I don’t think they were gathering bovine cows.