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Cool Fact: Oldest Standard Units



What is the oldest system of standard weights and measures?

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The first standardized system of measurement was created around 2700
BC in Mesopotamia. The units included the cubit, or kush, a unit of
length, and the shekel, a unit of weight.

The new system's most powerful feature was the invention of units for
multiples of other units, such as the nindan (12 cubits). The
Mesopotamian system was complex and cumbersome by today's standards,
but it was a vast improvement over the old Sumerian system, in which
there were no units for multiple quantities.

For the Sumerians, twelve jars of oil would be noted as twelve
symbols, and five hundred jars would be laboriously noted (and
counted) as five hundred symbols. Even worse, different commodities
were measured in different systems, and written using different
symbols.

The standardized Mesopotamian system made it possible to conveniently
trade much larger quantities of goods, which became ever more
important as the civilization grew.

More about the Mesopotamian system of measurement:
http://it.stlawu.edu/~dmelvill/mesomath/obmetrology.html

More about the earlier Sumerian system:
http://it.stlawu.edu/~dmelvill/mesomath/sumerian.html


Cool Fact of the Day
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