At first the poor guy whose body was decided to be used for measurement would have his arm foot etc amputated and that would be passed around. Egyptians mainly used their cubits to measure objects.
Fish Anatomy Wikipedia
Ancient measurement using body parts. The distance between your nose. For an average adult male at least average as of a couple of millennia ago a cubit works out to about 18 inches 457cm. It employed parts of the body as a source of unitsfor example the distance from the pulse to the base of the thumb. The width of your palm is about 4 inches 10 centimeters. Your forearm from elbow to fingertip. Eight body based units of measurement before we had precise standardized units of measure such as meters and feet lengths and even ocasionally volumes were reckoned based on the average dimensions of human body parts.
This is called non standard measurements. The ancient chinese system completely separated from the mediterranean european history of metrology is that of ancient china yet the chinese system exhibits all the principal characteristics of the western. From nose to finger tip. At some point years ago i picked up the seemingly useless piece of information that an ancient unit of measurement called the cubit was the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. An average foot is about 12 inches long. Your forearm is about 15 feet 46 centimeters.
Each persons body part differed from another persons body part. The units of length seem to have originally been anthropic based on various parts of the human body although these were standardized using cubit rods strands of rope and official measures maintained at some temples. Quinaria the cross sectional area of a pipe created from a flat sheet of lead 5 digits wide stremma the amount of land a person can plow in a day. Ancient measurement of length was based on the human body for example the length of a foot the length of a stride the span of a hand and the breadth of a thumb. Following alexander the greats conquest of persia and subsequent de. Using your body to estimate length your hand.
Then when it was realised that several people wanted to measure at the same time they would line up slaves in order of foot size etc and pick several slaves whose feet were the same size. The ancient egyptian units of measurement are those used by the dynasties of ancient egypt prior to its incorporation in the roman empire and general adoption of roman greek and byzantine units of measurement. Ancient people measured objects using different body parts. There were unbelievably many different measurement systems developed in early times most of them only being used in a small locality.
Gallery of Ancient Measurement Using Body Parts
