Hands and feet

I was telling Jun Zhan about my fingers and toes post and he threw another question back at me. Why does a day have 24 hours, and why is 12 the magical number? I have absolutely no idea. I don't know why one full round is 360 degrees, and why 12 inches make one feet or 3 feet a yard.

If I were to postulate, I'll guess that 10 was the original unit, and they added two more; one for the King and one for the Queen. And 3 will easily be representation of the Holy Trinity.

I HAVE NO IDEA.

I've thought about it before and nothing came up. I don't know which came first, geometry or religion, specifically Catholicism in England.

But my big guess is..

There were two main systems in the world before everything was standardised. One will be the English system, and another will be the Arabic system - the East and West. People in the East (Arabs and Chinese) took 10 as the magic number, while people in the west counted in dozens.

When Marco Polo came along and joined the two worlds in a line of trade, the English began to discover a simpler way of doing math. And the Chinese, well, just stuck to their way of doing calculus (?)

With trade and immigration, progress and prosperity, separate systems began to merge and people began to accept math as one unified world. Until Albert Einstein skipped by and maths became physics.

What a nonsensical post this is.