Roman Feet and Peeing Reindeer: the History of Measuring Length

You’re likely familiar with the two most common length measurement systems from around the world: the Metric system and the Imperial system. They make use of meters and feet respectively, and from these bases come many more degrees, both big and small. These are inches, centimeters, kilometers, yards, miles, etc.

The Metric system in particular is very popular. In fact, the meter holds the special accolade of belonging to the International System of Units (SI); scientists around the world have agreed to perform their experiments while using these units. If a scientific paper contains a length measurement, it will likely be in meters, no matter where in the world it was written.

But where did the meter come from? Even though it has been in use since the late 18th Century, it was recently redefined in 2019 by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures as the following:

If you’re anything like me, this means nothing to you. Genuinely, I don’t know what that means. But, we can see why a definition like this could be useful. The desire for an ultra-specific and highly-standardized measurement system came about around the time we figured out how to harness the power of electricity. After some thought and a lot of borrowing from Latin, the meter got a whole family of relatives like the centimeter and the kilometer.

While it might seem counterintuitive, for the majority of history, we have not been overly concerned with our measurements being exact. It turns out that history is full of non-specific units of measurement that are not standardized using anything close to the distance of light traveling in a vacuum. They are instead defined by their relationship to each other; in other words, they are defined using proportions.

Two ways to think about measuring the same room.

One of the most common ways people have created a system of measurement throughout history has been to use the human body, something which, quite famously, comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. It might not be surprising that the foot used to actually be measured with the foot. But, did you know that just like a foot, English used to have a unit of measurement called a hand? In today’s post, I want to explore some obsolete length measurements from around the world’s languages. Some of these are still used in the places where they originated, but they have either taken on new meanings or they are not official measurements used in fields like mechanical construction or medicine.

The article will be broken up into two sections: Short Lengths, which I will call Dimension, and Long Lengths, which I will call Distance.

Let’s get started!

Dimension

The Stagnant Body as a Tool

In the Western World, a good chunk of our culture has been influenced by that of the Roman Empire, a society which was also influenced by many, namely Classical Greece. When Rome conquered Greece, there was a huge intermingling of ideas. One of the main things that the Romans adopted from the Greeks was their measurement system. And this system was actually adopted from the Egyptians. 

The main unit of distance in Ancient Egypt was the cubit, the definition of which was the distance from one’s elbow to the tip of their middle finger. This length was further divided into subunits, most commonly the palm (1/6 of a cubit) and the digit (1/24 of a cubit). The Egyptian foot was defined as four palms or sixteen fingers, and this is the measurement that the Greeks used most heavily. In the diagram, I have indicated the foot as the forearm because they are proportionally equivalent; the Egyptians even indicated it with a bent-arm hieroglyphic.

The Ancient Romans adapted the Egyptian and Greek feet as the Roman foot. They also took the concept of the finger and its proportion of 1/16 of the foot, but they created a new measurement called a pollex, the Latin word for “thumb.” As thumbs are usually a bit thicker than the other fingers, they were given the definition of 1/12 of a Roman foot. Over time, the word for “one-twelfth” began to get used, uncia, and this is where our modern-word, “inch” derives from.

English has made use of all sorts of body measurements throughout its history: we’ve had all of these above and much more. The cubit was used across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, but in English, it was referred to as an ell, the old word for arm. Interestingly, this word still exists in English in the word “elbow,” a combination of “ell” and “bow,” meaning “the bend of the arm.” The “fathom” was also a very common measurement, a word that translates to “outstretched arms” and measured the distance from fingertip to fingertip on opposite hands when the arms are held outward. The “shaftment” was equal to about 6 inches and measured the distance of the fist and the extended thumb when the hand is in the “thumbs-up” position.

While the Greeks, Romans, and much of the Western world borrowed the ideas for their measurement systems from the Egyptians, the concept of using the stagnant body as a tool for discerning an object’s dimensions has popped up independently across the world.

In India, there was a measurement called an angula, which was the width of a finger. Four fingers together made a dhanurgrah, meaning “the hand while gripping a bow,” a measurement which is similar to the Egyptian palm. Three of these dhanurgrah are equivalent to what was called the “Great Span” in Egyptian and the vitastaa in Sanskrit, the measurement between the thumb and pinkie tips. Two of these create a haath, a distance that matches the cubit. There was also a unit that stood for the width of the foot called a pada, equal to 6 angula.

In China, the chi is a unit of measurement which was originally equal to the Egyptian “Small Span,” and although it is often translated as the “Chinese foot,” it measures the distance between the thumb and index fingertip.

In Russian, there is a measurement that uses the whole arm length, from the shoulder to the middle fingertip, called an arshin (аршин). There is also one called kosaya sazhen (косая сажень which translates to “skewed fathom” and it indicates the distance of the diagonal line that is formed between an arm stretched out and upward and the opposite leg when swung out. Take a look at the graphic below which indicates obsolete Russian measurements. You’ll notice they have words for many of the measurements we already talked about.

The Ancient Americas also made use of the body in many of the same ways.

In Incan civilizations, the digit was called a rokana, the small span measurement was called a yuku, the palm was called a capa, the cubit was called a cuchuch, and the fathom was called a ricra.

Aztec peoples often used a measurement called a tlacaxilanti which represented the distance from the ground to the navel while standing. It was measured with a tool called a tlalcuahuitl, from which several other measurements come from. The Aztec had other unique body measurements such as a bone which was ⅕ of a tlacaxilanti, and the heart which was ⅖ of a tlacaxilanti.

Using Objects

Just as measurements have been taken using the body throughout history, humans have also used the lengths of objects. In general, measurements that come from objects would be utilized in contexts where those objects were used. For example, the barleycorn used to be an official measurement, defined as the length of a barleycorn “dry and round.” It was used in settings like a marketplace where food of different sizes is being sold. The inch actually used to be officially defined as the length of three barleycorns. If a smaller unit was needed, sometimes the poppyseed would be used, defined as “¼ of a barleycorn.” 

The barleycorn is still the measurement for shoe-sizes in English-speaking countries.

In the context of clothing, the nail was a very common measurement, defined as the distance between nails which hold up a hanging cloth, around 2.5 inches.

When land was being surveyed, the link and chain were common measurements. The definition of a link was ⅔ of a foot and it came from the distance of a metal link in a surveyor’s chain. One chain was standardized as 100 links. There were also other measurements used by surveyors, such as the perch, which comes from the word for the type of Roman spear, the pike, and it was defined as 25 links. 160 perches becomes an acre, a unit that is better known as a measurement of area but can also be a unit of length. In Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, there was a unit called a schoenus which was measured using a long rope with equally-spaced intervals of knots.

Examples of surveyor tools.

I mentioned the Indian haath above, equal to the cubit or ell. Four of them join into a dhanush, a word that literally means “bow.” A dhanush was a unit that was actually equal to around 6 feet, so this meaning of “bow” likely referred to one that was much larger than one used by a typical human, perhaps a mythological bow like Indra’s all-powerful Vijaya. 

Lord Rama wielding a mythological bow, which is almost as tall as he is.

One of the coolest (albeit hard to use) measurements is called the rajakhan and it was standardized as the size of a dust particle which is expelled from the back of a chariot. A liksha was defined as eight rajakhan, but the word itself means “an egg of lice.” Eight liksha became a yuka, the size of a single louse.

All of the units that I have mentioned so far have been relatively short compared to those like miles or kilometers. Most civilizations realized that using small measurements like the cubit was not very effective at measuring distance; the distance from Athens to Sparta is around 200 km, but I’m sure that reach was never realized as 200,000,000 fingers.

However, there have been instances of very large objects representing length measurements. In Ancient Greece, the hippikon was a unit that came from the length of the Hippodrome, an ancient Greek horse-racing stadium. 

In English-speaking countries, the city block is one of the most common measurements used when giving someone directions even though the actual distance of it will vary depending on where you are. The football field is also commonly-used when referring to the length of very large objects or medium-length distances.

Almost every major city in America has their own definition for a “city block.”

For distance, different units were conceptualized, ones which were often based on movement.

Distance

The Moving Body as a Tool

While the body parts were used as tools based on their lengths, the body in motion was also used. Across cultures, the most common distance unit was the distance from one leg to another when walking forward, referred to as a step or a pace. The word mile comes from the word for “one-thousand” and it was measured with the pace; the first mile was 1,000 paces.

Incan civilizations had a word for the pace, a thatkiy. 6,000 of these became a tupu and a wamani was 30 tupu (18,000 thatkiy).

The league is a unit which originally indicated the distance that somebody can travel through walking in an hour. This exact idea is found in the Iranian parasang and the German wegstunde. 

In Norway, the rast is a unit which indicates around 9km, and it comes from the word for “rest,” speaking to the distance that a typical human can walk without needing a significant period of rest.

The Moving Object

Just as the body in motion was used as a measurement device, objects in motion could also be used. When I say “object,” I am referring to anything that is not the human body; an animal such as a horse could be an “object.” In fact, the horse has historically been used in Tatar cultures: the distance a horse travels without needing to stop (Atnı tuqtawsız yurıyu) is a unit and so is the distance covered in a day of riding one (Cäyäwleneñ könlek yulı).

The furlong was a measurement (around ⅛ of a mile) that comes from the words “furrow” (a plowed trench) and “long.” It indicated the distance that a plow could travel across a field before needing to turn. This plow-length actually popped up in a couple different places; the Russian vyersta (верста) indicates the same idea.

The steinkast (“stone-cast”) is a unit that is still used colloquially in Norway. It measures around 45 feet and it comes from the distance that one can throw a small rock.

In Sweden, a unit called a kyndemil once indicated the distance one can travel with a torch before it extinguishes.

A Finnish unit called a poronkusema was determined by the distance a reindeer can travel without needing to stop to urinate, around 7.5 km.

Perhaps the most peculiar distance markers were those that utilized sound. The gavyuti was an Indian unit which was defined as the distance from which a cow’s moo can be heard, around 3 km. In Finland, the peninkulma measured the distance from which a dog’s bark can be heard. 

It’s likely that every culture that has created measurements has made use of the human body, after all, having a body is the one thing that ties all us humans together. The way that different groups have split the body into parts can have a lot of overlap, but it can also be a bit arbitrary. Additionally, units have existed throughout history that haven’t been used very often. The Greek hippikon was probably not a very popular unit outside of constructing a horse-racing stadium.

But, it is cool to see how cultures adapt to their own needs and how they use what they have to interact with the world. The Reindeer urination unit would’ve been useless to an Ancient Egyptian, but maybe a camel urination unit would’ve worked!

I hope this article helped open your eyes to the complicated history of measurements. There is still so much to say; I only covered one type of measurement: length. The history of units for area, volume, weight, time, and others are just as complex. Let me know in the comments if you want me to write an article on one of them!

As always, thanks for reading!

Dillon