Ten

Have you ever paused to think about why it is the 10th whole number that has 2 digits?

Why are we, humans, so fixated on this otherwise ordinary number? Apart from the fact that it has one more digit in its current representation, nothing sets it apart from the preceding numbers. Why Ten?

I found out my first clue in the Roman numeral system, where the first change in symbol after ‘I’ which represents a unit, comes with 5 being written as ‘V’, followed by ‘X’ for 10.

V+V=X

5+5=10

I realised that the reason our whole decimal system(decimal being derived from the Latin word decimus, meaning tenth) is based on 10’s is because of how many appendages emerge from our hands and feet. Ten. We have 10 fingers and 10 toes.

Humans first learnt to count with their ten fingers. Since then we have evolved, but almost all the major numeral systems that were subsequently invented were based on the number of fingers we had. Ten.

Just think about it. Somewhere our there in space, IntelligentAlienLifeForms™, whom we have not yet contacted, may have 12 or 14 or 8 fingers. You know what that would mean. They would be using an entirely different numeral system, where the first double-digit number appears only after 12 or 14 or 8 single digit-numbers.

When and if we do communicate with the aforementioned IntelligentAlienLifeForms™, we will have a tough time translating numbers to them.

-Ishaan Mishra