Yuku free message boards

Not to mention inches in a foot and months in a year, and twice twelve hours in a day (12 each in night and "day"(in the more restrictive sense)).

It goes back at least to the Romans, who typically divided things into twelfths (the uncia, whence our ounce and inch, was the name given to 1/12 of a pound and 1/12 of a foot). There may be a mystical/astronomical connection (12 constellations of the zodiac and/or lunar months (roughly speaking) in a year), but it likely was also influenced by the fact that there are more ways to divide 12 (divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6) than 10 (divisible by 2 and 5). This is also significant when it comes to arranging things in packaging: a 3x4 array is usually more compact than 2x5, and if you can stack the items, then a dozen offers a 2x2x3 arrangement, generally much more efficient than one layer of 2x5.

The Babylonians took divisibility even more seriously and grouped things by 60s (divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20 and 30), from which we get 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute, and 360 degrees in a circle.

None of this addresses the real mystery: why are hot dogs sold by tens and hot dog buns by eights or dozens?


Note: I'm not mantling janeskid, I just took a while to write this, due to interruptions.