Why is a minute 60 seconds?

Why are there 60 minute in hour, 12 hours in a day/night, or 60 seconds in a minute? We can thank the ancient Sumerians, from the 3rd millennium BC, for being the first recorded civilization to have a numeral system with sixty as the base. In a word they invented sexagesimal (base 60). Though the people of Sumer (today Iraq) claim the knowledge was not invented by them but rather taught to them by their gods the Anunnaki. However base 60 came into the consciousness of humans it has remain incredibly useful to humanity. The Sumerians sexagesary numeral system was passed on to the Babylonians and then to world. Today we still use there wisdom in measuring time, angles, and geographic coordinates. Spin around and do a 360. Feel that …now to get a even better feel for their numbers check out the site http://easycalculation.com/funny/numerals/sumerian.php , to see how they wrote fractions go to http://it.stlawu.edu/~dmelvill/mesomath/Numbers.html , and to see how they wrote numbers larger then sixty http://it.stlawu.edu/~dmelvill/mesomath/Bignums.html . Sixty is the smallest number divisible by every number from 1 to 6. Also the number 60 has 12 factors (1,2,3,4,5,6,10, 12,15, 20, 30, 60), making many fractions of sexagesimal simple. Think of all the ways you can evenly divide up an hour. I came up with today’s question because my daughter is studying Babylon in her 5th grade class but what I learn most from the question of the day is that sexagesimal is my new favorite word. It’s big, it’s smart, and it’s kinky. Say it with me …sex·a·ges·i·mal. Now I dare you to use it in a sentence today. -Anaspaceship