I was at a Mathematics teaching seminar talking about teaching primary school kids how to use place value (approximate rounding to base 10) to simplify addition and subtraction.
The leader of the seminar said:
The Gauls were using base 5 and it held back their development. When Base 10 was imported from India and the Arabic nations it really sped things up. This is when the European Enlightenment really got kicked off.
I find this harder to believe for a couple of reasons. Arguably Enlightenment thinking comes from the rationalism of Descartes in the early 1600's. (ie 400 years later).
Also it's hard to tie the cause of the European Enlightenment to a single cause. You might argue that the many European Wars drove military engineering which drove science in chemistry and mechanical engineering. You might argue that the incredible natural resources of farmland, coal, iron and wood drove a 'perfect resources synergy' that lead to developments in science and engineering not available to other countries.
My question is: Is there evidence to suggest that the change from the Gaul's Base 5 to Base 10 kicked off the European Enlightenment?