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

Sounds similar to the theories in Uriels' Machine (I think - bit complicated for teatime thursday really).
Did they measure time in Hours and Minutes back then though?

[The Megalithic henges are allegedy to do with calculating time, aligning calendars and so on using shadows at the solstices and equinoxes...not, as I would rather think, a relic from a prehistoric Groundforce makeover...and most of them are circular and very accurate, so did the builders know about degrees anddid they use 360 of the little blighters? ]


I think I need to lay down with my damp towel over my head.

Forty2

becuase we're angle-saxon, of course

I think it's got something to do with saling from the time of coloumbus. Something like if you take a certain number of nautical miles they make a degree on the earths surface.

ZP

Obviously some people have actually done some research on this subject. Anyone thought of doing an article for the guide on this subject?

Willie

I think that nautical miles maybe derive from degrees rather than the other way around. It's the same with a lot of other measurements, they all derive from each other but have no real basis to the universe. Like the fluid ounce - it is the amount of water that weighs one ounce BUT one ounce relates to nothing in particular. The metre is one ten millionth part of the arc of the polar quadrant of the earth taken through Paris - doesn't amount to much, some Frenchman decided on it as a unit of measurement is all. A parsec is the distance at which a star would have a parallax of one second of an arc, but as one second of an arc is an arbitrary unit, it has no meaning. Measurement is a true invention, not a discovery, it derives from the need to measure things and not from any universal truth.

Having said this, and I know I mocked it before, but the only thing that I can think of that has actual measureable quantity that occurs naturally in the universe is sound waves. A note, plucked on a string, has harmonics at regular measurable intervals along it's length. These measurements are fractional rather than stepped and therefore fractions can be considered to be real, everything else is an illusion.

Sorry, a fluid ounce is the VOLUME of the amount of water that weighs one ounce.

Thus far I've seen here a lot of faulty logic and digressive speculation in the search for an answer to this question - a question that cannot in fact be fully answered. Let me explain.

By the 21st century B.C., the Sumerians had developed a time-keeping system founded on a calendar year of 360 days. This came from rounding off the lunar month to 30 days, which fit neatly into the Sumerians' mathematic and astronomic system. This system is based on the numbers 6 and 60, which equals 360 when multiplied - the number we still use to divide the sky and every circular plane. NO ONE KNOWS why the the Sumerians and later the Babylonians chose these numbers, though four thousand years later they remain the numeric basis for everything from determining one's position at sea to the location in the sky of a distant galaxy vis-a-vis the earth.

So why do we use the 360 degree system? Four thousand years of deeply ingrained habit. Why did the ancients use it? The answer is lost to time. Only unprovable speculation remains.

I'm still in secondary school, and I'm not really good at Maths, but I'll ask my Maths teacher why its 360 degrees. Even though we did all the stuff to do with circles only a few months ago my teacher never said why there's 360 degrees in a circle, hmmmmm...

He won't answer and if he does it won't be a straight answer or intelligable. I have great distrust of Maths Teachers!

Aliquis Maribilis.

I just wanted to type the name.

That is precisely why I asked the question.

Dave Keeper of Own Goal

ps

Emily

I just wanted to type the name.

Teachers teach by the book.

It isn't in a book.

i got 20 quid outa maths teacher yesterday! heehee!

Blimey....my old maths teacher couldn't count to 360 (or 20 for that matter)...what time period was the Sumerian and Babylonian era?


[and by the by, groovy new forward thinking teachers such as myself do not teach by the book...print is dead! We teach by the CD ROM hypertext multimedia experience these days, thankyouverymuch].


There is a unit of measurement called the megalithic yard that is not an arbitrary unit and is based on celestial observations meaning it is the same length all over the world (so I read in a [deceased] book). Not sure if it's connected to 360 degrees though, but the ancient European peoples used it as a unit of measurement to construct the Henges (circular, back to the 360 degrees etc...).

Yours, hoplessly out of my depth,

40Two

Perhaps you should get arm bands?

Yep, arm bands would be an useful addition to my metaphorical swimwear collection...so would knowing what I'm talking about which is a bit of a tall order on this particular topic - I mean, the book I read (LITTLE WHITE LIE ALERT - I still haven't finished it, technically) was very interesting and all that but I'd need to read it again to get my facts straight. Or even mildy straight, as they resemble a corkscrew currently. Which brings us back to the circular thing - is there a genetic / dna / subconscious programming thing about the 360 degrees?

I'm sure I read somewhere the use of the 360 degree circle and so on predates Sumer et al?

I say hang the sense of it and eat

I concur...I think the whole 360 degree thing should be S.E.P!

S.E.P., what?

SEP = Someone Else's Problem

As in the field. I see.

mind you, if I try and pass the problem on to someone else, it will in the fullness of time (i.e. approx: 20 minutes) become mine again!