This long cycle was an application of the vigesimal system to their reckoning of time.
Leon de Rosny, who has shown that it is a consistent vigesimal method.
Proceeding to higher numbers, it is interesting to note that they also proceed on the vigesimal system, although this has not heretofore been distinctly shown.
It counted by units and scores; in other words, it was a vigesimal system.
In America we have, within a limited range of languages, vigesimal systems like the Mexican, and systems limited to the three first units like the Caribb.
As the latter is due to finger-reckoning, so the use of the fingers and the toes produced a vigesimal scale.
This is the case, for instance, in the Celtic languages; and the Breton or Gaulish names have affected the Latin system, so that the French names for some numbers are on the vigesimal system.
In the Maya scale we have one of the best and most extended examples of vigesimal numeration ever developed by any race.
In the Caucasus region a group of languages is found, in which all but three or four contain vigesimal systems.
In the Nicobar Islands of the Indian Ocean a well-developed example of vigesimal numeration is found.
Among the northern tribes of Siberia the numeral scales appear to be ruder and less simple than those just examined, and the counting to be more consistently vigesimal than in any scale we have thus far met with.
One remarkably interesting number system is that exhibited by the Mosquito tribe[212] of Central America, who possess an extensive quinary-vigesimal scale containing one binary and three senary compounds.
But it is so remarkable and anomalous to find the decimal and vigesimal scales mingled in this manner that one involuntarily suspects either incompleteness of form, or an actual mistake.
This scale contains a strange commingling of decimal and vigesimal counting.
In no other part of the world is vigesimal counting found so perfectly developed, and, among native races, so generally preferred, as in North and South America.
As the count proceeds further, the quinary base may be retained, or it may be supplanted by a decimal or a vigesimal base.
In Asia thevigesimal system is to be found with greater frequency than in Europe or Africa, but it is still the exception.
In connection with the Celtic language, mention must be made of the persistent vigesimal element which has held its place in French.
Among South American vigesimal systems, the best known is that of the Chibchas or Muyscas of the Bogota region, which was obtained at an early date by the missionaries who laboured among them.
Some of the systems obtained from the languages of these peoples are perfect, extended examples of vigesimal counting, not to be duplicated in any other quarter of the globe.
The fact that a number system is partly decimal and partly vigesimal is found to be of such frequent occurrence that this point in the Tlingit scale need excite no special wonder.
On the other hand, the odd tens are formed in the ordinaryvigesimal manner.
A pure quinary or vigesimal number system is exceedingly rare; but quinary scales certainly do exist in which, as far as we possess the numerals, no trace of any other influence appears.
It would seem probable, therefore, that had there been any irregularity in the 5th place in the inscriptions (for such the use of 13 in a vigesimal system must be called), it would have been found also in the codices.
In other words, in the codices the Maya carried out their vigesimal system to six places without a break other than the one in the 2d place, just noted.
He it was who first discovered and worked out the ingenious vigesimal system of numeration used by the Maya, and who first pointed out how this system was utilized to record astronomical and chronological facts.
Thus on the basis of the glyphs themselves it seems possible to show that all belong to one and the same numerical series, which progresses according to the terms of a vigesimal system of numeration.
However dissimilar these two methods of representing the numbers may appear at first sight, fundamentally they are the same, since both have as their basis the same vigesimal system of numeration.
The Maya expressed their higher numbers in two ways, in both of which the numbers rise by successive terms of the same vigesimal system: 1.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "vigesimal" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
