There are 60 minutes in an hour because of the Sumerians.

2500 BC

Their base-60 counting arose in the 3rd millennium BC, passed to the Babylonians and survives today in minutes, seconds, degrees and coordinates.

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The event

• Invention of writing in Sumerc. 3200 BC · Uruk. Scribes in the Sumerian city of Uruk began recording accounts with signs on clay tablets, which evolved into cuneiform. One of the world's first writing systems, it shaped Near Eastern culture for three millennia.

25th century BC

More amazing facts

• 2560 BC · 2000 BC When the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island — the last of them died out only around 2000 BC.
• 2560 BC · 31 BC · 1969 Cleopatra (born 69 BC) lived closer in time to the Moon landing (about 2,040 years) than to the building of the Great Pyramid (about 2,490 years).
• 2560 BC The oldest inscribed papyrus is a logbook of stone deliveries for the Great Pyramid.
• 2500 BC · 2334 BC Sargon of Akkad boasted that ships from Meluhha moored at his capital.
• 2500 BC · 2100 BC The Sumerian King List includes a woman ruler — a tavern keeper.
• 2500 BC In Mohenjo-daro 4,500 years ago many houses had toilets linked to a citywide sewer system.

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