Most our numbering systems are base-10 and this convention likely is a result of our ten fingers. If we ever come across extraterrestrial intelligent life, they may have a different number of digits and a different numbering system. For example, the popular little green man is often depicted with four on each hand. Such beings would gravitate to a base-8 or octal numbering system.
We don't have to leave our planet to encounter examples of octal systems. Some native American tribes used an octal system as they counted on their knuckles. More recently, octal systems have been used in computer platforms. Hexadecimal systems (using 16 digits) are also used but require the use of 6 letters in addition to the digits 0 through 9.
Volume measurements of dry goods are somewhat octal in their arrangement; 8 pints to a gallon; 8 gallons to a bushel; 8 bushels to a seam. The full system has other intermediate volumes. Each is double of the prior volume: pint, quart, pottle, gallon, peck, kenning, bushel, strike, coomb, and seam.
Octal numbering systems have been proposed to facilitate division of quantities into halves and quarters, but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to drop our base-10 system. If easy divisibility was the goal, we would adopt the ancient Babylonian sexagesimal system (base-60). This system was used because 60 has many factors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60. We have carried on the sexagesimal system for our units time with 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. Also, with our system of geographical positions one degree of longitude or latitude is divided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds. The nautical mile is one minute of arc along the meridian.
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