Currently the line of thinking is that technology is complex and we need to complex instrumentation and thoughtful experiments over a long period of time before a new technology is created.
However, consider time. We take for granted that the clock divides the day into 60 minutes, with 60 seconds per minute and 24 hours per day. But why this complexity? Since most of our numbering system is base 10, there is every reason to make our time base 10 too. Maybe, there should be 10 seconds in a minute and 10 minutes in an hour. So, is there a simple reason? Steven Strogatz points out in his book the Joy of X that the logic is extremely simple and Babylonians had figured it out.
Turns out that their system was set to the base 60. Interestingly, 60 is the first large number that is divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6, and of course 10,12,15,20, and 30. Which means that if you have to split the hour and time into neat segments, having 60 as the base makes it very easy? If you were trying to split any other large number you would have to go into fractions and that could get difficult.
Similarly, that is the same reason why degrees for a complete circle/round is 360 degrees. It makes the task of splitting into many segments very easy.