Learn & Understand

Why 60? The Babylonian Roots of Degrees and Minutes

Coordinates in degrees, minutes, and seconds carry a fossil of one of the oldest number systems on Earth. The division of a degree into 60 minutes, and a minute into 60 seconds, comes from the ancient Babylonians and their base-60 arithmetic — a system so useful it still governs how we measure angles, and time, thousands of years later.

Counting in Sixties

Most of the world counts in tens, but the ancient Babylonians used a base-60 system, called sexagesimal. Whether it arose from counting finger joints, from astronomy, or from the number's mathematical convenience, base 60 became the foundation of their advanced mathematics and astronomy — and it left a permanent mark on how we divide circles and hours.

Why 60 Is So Convenient

Sixty has a remarkable property: it divides evenly by many numbers — two, three, four, five, six, and more. This makes fractions tidy, which is enormously helpful when splitting circles, angles, and time into equal parts without awkward remainders. A third of sixty is a clean twenty; a third of a hundred is not. The Babylonians chose a base that made division gracefully simple.

Degrees, Minutes, Seconds

This is why a degree of latitude or longitude splits into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds — and why the circle has 360 degrees, itself a multiple of 60. The words “minute” and “second” come from Latin for the first and second small divisions. The same base-60 scheme gives us 60 minutes in an hour, linking the measurement of angles and time in a shared ancient inheritance.

Converting to Decimal

Modern computing prefers plain decimals, so coordinates in degrees, minutes, and seconds are often converted to decimal degrees by adding the minutes as sixtieths and the seconds as thirty-six-hundredths of a degree. The conversion is a small act of translation between two number systems — the ancient base-60 of the Babylonians and the base-10 of the modern calculator.

Converting Coordinates

To convert degrees-minutes-seconds to decimal degrees, use the DMS to Decimal Degrees Calculator. For the reverse and more, use the Latitude Longitude Converter, and measure between coordinates with the Distance Between Coordinates Calculator.