Perhaps some reader has ever asked about so seemingly irrelevant question as the origin of the names \u00abminute\u00bb and \u00absecond\u00bb, the time\u2019s dividers, but any knowledge is valuable.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n\tHistory Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine "Firsts" in Recorded History<\/em> (1956) is the title of a famous work of Noah Krame<\/em>r published in the fifties of the last century. The Sumerians <\/em>were pioneered on writing, astronomy, mathematics, etc.. Egyptians learned a lot from them and from both (Sumerians and their descendants in the area, Babylonians, Persians, etc.., and Egyptians) learned Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples.<\/p>\n \n\tIn Sumer there is any indication of a numeral system with five as the base, quinary<\/em>, undoubtedly related to the five fingers. They also used a dozenal <\/em>(duodecimal<\/em>) system with base twelve, base-12; (they had it pointing with the thumb three phalanges in each of the remaining four fingers); it is related to the twelve moons of the year … They used also a decimal <\/em>system, denary <\/em>),base-10, associated with the ten hand’s fingers.<\/p>\n \n\tInterestingly also they used a sexagesimal <\/em>system, (base 60) but we do not know exactly its origin. It is thought that this system facilitated the equivalence between the decimal <\/em>and dozenal <\/em>(duodecimal), since the divisors of 60 are 1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6, 10, 12, 20, 30, 60.<\/p>\n \n\tWell, from the dozenal <\/em>(duodecimal) and sexagesimal <\/em>systems, from the Sumerians approaches and Egyptian and Greek , it was established the division of time in hours<\/em>, these in minutes<\/em>, and these in seconds<\/em>. And this is the system that we employed.<\/p>\n \n\tThe same system is applied to the division of space.<\/p>\n \n\tSo the current measures of the angles <\/em>in degrees <\/em>and minutes<\/em>, this one of the clock <\/em>face or timing measure, and this one of the earth <\/em>orb globe with latitude <\/em>and longitude <\/em>coordinates, have their origin in the numeral system invented by the Sumerians <\/em>and Babylonians <\/em>4,000 years ago.<\/p>\n \n\tEratosthenes<\/em>, Greek mathematician and astronomer (c. 276-194 BC) used the sexagesimal <\/em>system to divide the circle into 60 parts or degrees (the Latin word gradus <\/em>means step<\/em>) and created the horizontal parallel lines from east to west to indicate the latitude<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tA century later Hipparchus <\/em>created a system of vertical lines going from north to south, dividing the sphere into 360 degrees.<\/p>\n \n\tAt mid-second century A.D. Ptolemy <\/em>developed the work of Hipparchus <\/em>and divided the 360 degrees each one into 60 smaller parties in his work “Almagest<\/em>”. These fractions are called "partes minutae primae<\/em>", ie, "first small parts<\/em>." Again he fractionated these first parts into other smaller 60, and he called these "partes minutae secundae<\/em> ", ie "second small parts<\/em>."<\/p>\n \n\tThe first fraction, the "partes minutae primae<\/em>" ended up being called "minutae<\/em>", "small<\/em>", from where we derive our word "minute<\/em>".<\/p>\n \n\tThe second fraction, "partes minutae secundae<\/em>", "second small parts<\/em>", ended up being called "secundae<\/em>", and from this were derive the word "second<\/em>".<\/p>\n \n\tNote<\/em>: Ptolemy <\/em>wrote his work in Greek and it is named Μαθηματικ\u1f74 Σ\u03cdνταξις (Mathematike Syntax<\/em>), Mathematical Composition<\/em>. In Latin it was known as Syntaxis mathematica<\/em>. It was then called '\u1f29 Μεγ\u1f71λε Σ\u03cdνταξις' He Megale Syntaxis, Great syntax, the Great Treatise<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe superlative of Greek adjective μεγ\u1f71λε, megale, great, big<\/em>, is μεγ\u03afστη, μ\u1f73γιστος, megiste, megistos,<\/em> (the greatest, the largest<\/em>). The word Almagest <\/em>is the Arabized form, with presenter or article "al<\/em>-", of the Greek superlative μεγ\u03afστη: al-Majisti<\/em> (\u0627\u0644\u0645\u062c\u0633\u0637\u064a). Gerard of Cremona<\/em> translated this book from Arabic into Latin in the famous school of Toledo <\/em>in 1175, which won a great importance in European scientific world.<\/p>\n \n\tMoreover, the division of hours into sixty minutes and minutes into sixty seconds only became widespread in use much later, when the man was able to build mechanical clocks to mark that duration, ie, from the sixteenth century , XVII …<\/p>\n \n\tIt is still an interesting curiosity how in the necessary division of the seconds we do not longer use the sexagesimal <\/em>system but the decimal <\/em>: we talk with tenths <\/em>and hundredths <\/em>and thousandths <\/em>of a second<\/p>\n \n\tServe this current coexistence of numbering systems as evidence of possible coexistence also of the dozenal <\/em>(duodecimal<\/em>) system, the decimal <\/em>and sexagesimal <\/em>in ancient Sumer<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tI'll talk another time about the division of time in hours by Greeks <\/em>and Romans <\/em>. It is enough now to know that in Greek mythology, \u1f6bραι (Horai<\/em>) were originally goddesses who marked the passing of the seasons <\/em>and they have evolved to be twelve, each one for the twelve divisions of the day. Perhaps some reader has ever asked about so seemingly irrelevant question as the origin of the names \u00abminute\u00bb and \u00absecond\u00bb, the time\u2019s dividers, but any knowledge is valuable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,13,14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-habits","category-history","category-language-literature","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"