12 Hours in a Year

12 and 60 seem like very strange numbers to base time measurement on, but it only seems strange because we are so mentally programmed to count in tens. Humans would have had a very clear knowledge that a full moon occurred around 12 times during the course of the year. The whole connection of the fertile crescent and the mastery of using fire in such a way as to produce temperatures suitable for smelting metals saw some natural technological advances which should be mentioned at this point. We can identify that the people of this area were using a mixture of silica and lime to produce ornaments and vessels not dissimilar to those created by seramic means. This process is called vitrification, and is