The only special thing about Decimal and Base 10 is that we have 10 fingers (for the most part, exceptions exist). If we had 12, then 1/24th of a day would make sense, because it would be twice our then-normal Base 12 system. It is evolutionarily arbitrary.
base 12 (or 24) and base 60 are actually much nicer to work with mentally than 10.
10 divides by 1 5 and 10 so you can easily figure out halves and tenths thats about it.
12 divides by 1 2 3 4 6 and 12 so you can easily figure out halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, and twelths without much of an issue, less non terminating decimal nastyness.
60 is even better, as it divides by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60 you get a whole wealth of easy fractions, and easy mental division.
This is probably the reason why a lot of ancient societies had a preference for base 60 and base 12.
you can count to 12 on your fingers aswell, using your individual finger bones on one hand + your thumb as an index.
You can extend this system to count to 60 by using the 5 fingers of your other hand seqentially to represent each set of 12.
I need to add a time period to a time point far far far more often than I need to divide a time period into thirds, quarters, sixths and twelths. And dividing into quarters is not difficult in base 10 either, so you're basically down to chosing between pleasant time arithmetic for our current world or being able to easily divide thirds, sixths and twelths. I'd rather have the nice time arithmetic.
