Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
Computers use base two because their most natural unit can occupy one of a couple states: 0 or 1. One, two, base two.<p>Human hands, on the other foot, have ten fingers. Since our favorite mapping between things and integers is finger counting, we naturally end up with more than two states. Zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and the fully-extended state, ten. That's eleven states, which is why the global human standard is base-eleven.<p>Wait, what?