00:00Why we have ten fingers? I mean, why not six? Or eight?
00:04Well, somewhere along the great humanity highway, evolution got involved.
00:08Millions of years ago, when adventurous sea creatures began exploring life on land,
00:13the number of digits on their limbs was all over the place.
00:16But eventually, the human blueprint for five-fingered hands seemed workable.
00:21So evolution said, yeah, whatever, go ahead and ship it, it's fine.
00:25And the weird thing is, ten fingers didn't just shape our hands,
00:28it shaped our entire way of thinking, including math.
00:31The ancient human mind observed its own anatomical appendages
00:36and discovered they had a built-in calculator.
00:39Which means the foundation of our base ten method of mathematics
00:42was a direct result of playing, how many fingers am I holding up?
00:46Always wondered. Stream it now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Comments