....
Around 2200 years ago, the first Greek astronomer to describe a round Earth wanted a system to navigate it. He took that 6-part circle and divided each part by 60 to get 360 degrees.
......
My understanding is the 360 degree circle came from ancient celestial observations of what we call the sidereal year, i.e. how long it takes the sun to complete an annual cycle of motion relative to the fixed stars. We know this is 365 and a quarter days give or take a few minutes; lacking the conveniences of a Hubble Telescope, atomic clocks, and digital computations, the learned ancients were off a bit, or decided simply to round the circle to 360 units for convenience.
I cannot cite a reference, it's just something I read somewhere a long time ago; I stand to be corrected.
I have never read the connection between the twelve carpal bones in the fingers of one hand and the four-fingers-plus-one-thumb of the other hand explaining 12 and 60 in our measurements of time. If that's not really true, it should be.