6,60,360

360 is the number of degrees in a circle. Why 360? Why not 100 degrees in a circle, for example?

The number 6 Possibly derived from the feature that a radius of a circle is exactly the side of a hexagon drawn in that circle. Imagine a man playing with a forked stick in the sand 100000 years ago. when you draw a circle, then you find that you can rotate the forked stick around this circle circle exactly 6 times. So this number connects a CIRCLE with a NUMBER, no wonder this is a holy number!

The Sumerians have known the number Soss, (60) which was a base number in that time. Why 60? It is possible that there was base number, 6, in combination with a decimal (10) system. (The Sumerians reckoned in periods of 60 years, equal to one soss, 600 (60 X 10) years equal to one ner, and 3600 (60 X 60) years equal to one sar.)

note that 10 fingers in combination with 6 makes 60, but also 5 fingers x 12 finger digits makes 60. which system was used? or both? maybe this combination made the elder decide 60 was a convenient number? who knows.

Also,realize that 1+2+3 = 6 and also 1x2x3 = 6, and 60 is dividable by 1 (60),2 (30),3 (20),4 (15) ,5 (12) and 6 (10), so it is very convenient when you can calculate base 60.

Even counting with your hands to 60 is possible, because your fingers make 12 pieces on your hand. On your other hand you have 5 fingers, sou you can count 5 rounds of 12 = 60. Note that you don't use your thumb on one hand to count the 12 digits of your fingers. this means you can use this counting system while holding stuff in your hand, that might have been very convinient in those times.

I personally think that this has to be the first number whith triggered people to look further for other correlations between a number and a circle. There are correlations with all the other numbers below 10, but because of this first discovery it must have been the primary reason for the sumerians to incorporate the number 6 in their system. (Or an even earlier civilization)

A hexagon fits exactly a circle, when one side of the hexagon is exactly the radius of the circle. For the same reason as this the circle is easily dividable in 12 pieces, see my page about 12.

The second reason could be that 360 is related with 720 (2 x 360) , which is the apparent number of sun-disks which fit in a full circle. On a daily basis, due to the Earth's progress in its orbit, the sun appears to move the equivalence of two of its own diameters (i.e., about 1/360th of a full rotation) eastward through the heavens relative to the fixed stars. I can imagine that there was a shaman who put a stick in front, with exactly the size of the sun disk. When you should make a circle of those sticks, you use 720 sticks for a year. The second 360 being the nights. Note also that in the number 720 is a connection with the number 5 (360 / 72 = 5). This could be very important when you consider numbers as Holy, the 5 connected with the 6.

you cannot simply count the days in a year, how do you know the years end?

when you dont have a device to measure time, how do you know the days are getting longer again? Until the time came when the ancients could accurately measure the length of a day, they could not know when the shortest day was.

So from the above stated i think that the priests calculated the year by using these sacred numbers. Another possibility is that the year really was 360 days. see my page on calendars for that.

Ok, so we can say that these numbers were actually chosen. But still the question remains why the ancients were so interested in it. Well, why are WE interested in numbers? A soon there is an advanced society in place, there is a need for this knowledge. I already mentioned the calculation of the length of a year, but it could also be used for construction work and more. What about when 10 fruits cost 1 'dollar', and you only want to have 7 fruits ? Nowadays we just ask the japanese. But in that time you had to calculate yourself that 10/7 = 1,4285714285714285714285714285714. Besides, when you think about this numbers it gives you a deep understanding of how nature works. The number game was very much played by alchemists and occultists, and considered very holy in medieval times. (did you notice the calculation above 10/7 gives you a repeating secuence? does that make a priest think about numbers?)

So it was a holy task to do so. Also it is possible that inside this culture that it was fun to play with numbers and try to calculate nature, maybe for the glory of God. Nowadays many people look at sacred geometry and gematria. And when a lot of people join into this, there is a lot of combined brain-power. Also keep in mind that between the official figures of the first human at 100.000 BC (some say even 200.000 BC), and the Sumerians 3500 BC, the ancients had 96.500 years to figure this out. Realize that people could count long before they could write. The earliest known example of writing are some clay tokens from a site called Choga Mish in Iran. It is from around 8000 bc. The tokens were probably used to depict amounts of goods like grain. So it means they were counting the goods. Writing is considered to have begun with the Sumerian photographic script, about 3400 BC.

So it is very well possible that the ancients knew about the square root of 2, pi(3.14), Phi(1.618), phi(0.618), etc.. So why did the ancients use this holy numbers into their buildings? People like to think (including me, to be honest) that is is a message to us. But it is also possible that the ancients thought is was the strongest way of building (maybe they were right ;-), or maybe it was considered Holy to use these numbers.

fun trivia about 6

if you are afraid of the number 666 you are suffering hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. try to pronounce that!

1+2+3+4+5+...+36 = 666