I heard from one of my Latin teachers that in ancient Rome, there were actual shops that would do multiplications for their customers, basically by just having a big ol’ table of the results. One shop would have the thirteens column of the times table, for instance, and another might have the twenty-sevens.
At least I know how I’ll make my living if I ever get stuck in ancient Rome.
L. Sprague deCamp already beat you to that idea. See his book Lest Darkness Fall.
According to the recent book “Zero” by Charles Seife, the Babylonian base 60 system resulted directly from the use of the abacus. Once 60 stones were pushed across on the lowest wire, they would all be pushed back and one stone would be pushed over on the next wire to represent the 60 that had already been counted. Then the counter would be free to continue counting on the lowest wire. When another 60 had been counted on the low wire, another stone would be pushed over on the next higher wire, the stones would be pushed back on the lowest wire would be free for counting again. And so on. Clearly, there could be many wires on the abacus used, depending on how hight the number counted. The Babylinians then began to write down the results of the count by writing down the number of stones on each wire. The first wire was written down, then the esult of the second wire to its left, the third wire results to the left of that, and so on. This was the origin of the place system, which was unused anywhere else (including Egypt, but I think the Mayans did have a place system). The zero was developed as simply a place holder to indicate that the string did not have any stones on it.
I doubt the credibility with regards to “some African tribe” too – I have been learning an African langauge or two from West Africa and found that they have their own number systems also (although in one, all numbers above five are compounds of five plus X, bit funny but once one gets used to it…)
Problem with a lot of sayings about “funny places” is that they’re just half made up from misunderstandings.