I express regret and tender unqualified apology for wrongly mentioning V. Gordon Childe's famous work as Man the unknown instead of  as Man makes himself. In fact I read Alexis Carrel and V. Gordon Childe almost in succession so that such errors have occurred frequently. Ideologically the two intellectuals were poles apart.
Best
DB

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Dipak Bhattacharya <dbhattacharya200498@YAHOO.COM>
To: INDOLOGY@liverpool.ac.uk
Sent: Monday, 5 December 2011 1:06 PM
Subject: [INDOLOGY] The decimal system

The Babylonian usage was mentioned by Sir Gordon Childe, in Man the unknown or, may be, in What happened in history. I do not exactly remember after so many years. Sir Gordon did not much elaborate. But he understood the later developments as rediscovery. When I read that the source was not available to me. Later it seemed to me as sporadic and, what F. Engels (Anti-Dühring) would term in such context, ‘unconnected’. The Indian development, on the other hand, had ramifications as it left its impression in the further history of Mathematics through the Arabs. These were wrongly understood by Engels as unconnected.
Best
DB