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source: theconversation.com
The international order of units established GMT as the world’s time standard in 1885. We don’t know why people use numerals up to 12 and multiples of five to compute the precise time. However, the origins lead to Egyptians who divided their day into 12 smaller portions in their sundials.
When asked about why our ancestors used the number 12, individuals typically explain it as the representation of the number of lunar cycles in a year. People did not widely use minutes and seconds, on the other hand, to tell the time until several decades later. They then divided the hour into halves, thirds, quarters, and even had 12 sections on clock displays, but never 60. In truth, the hour was not widely considered to be 60 minutes.