Russia.. Archaeologists find ancient standard for measuring length in ancient Tauris Kherson

“The images are rulers indicating the total length and the corresponding proportional parts of the lengths of a certain length system. The length of the small ruler is 29.4 cm, and the large ruler with markings is 55.6 cm. It seems that this division was a standard of measurement established by the ancient Taurus Kherson authorities as an accepted standard for measuring lengths,” says Daniil Kostromychev, head of the reserve’s department.

As is known, standard rulers are currently used to measure lengths. In the past, each country or region used its own standards, i.e. there were no unified standards.

“The Greeks and Romans, for example, used the foot as a unit of length, but the Roman foot was shorter than the Greek one,” Kostromychev explains. “The Romans were the first to divide the foot into 12 parts. They also had a standard for length using copper strips, which might be as long as the emperor’s foot, divided into 12 parts. By the way, the word ‘ounce’ is Roman and means ‘twelfth part.’”

According to scientists, what distinguishes the city of Tauris Kherson from other ancient cities is that its agricultural area was divided into equal agricultural areas.

Natalia Gencott, the museum’s scientific secretary, said the discovery of the marble slab with the length measurements was unique.

“The representation of length measurements in pictures in ancient times is very rare,” she says. “There are, for example, several known images of ancient Roman standards in the world, all of which are stored in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The average length of the Roman foot is 29.62 cm. An image of a foot was discovered on a Byzantine mosaic in the house of Austulios in Kourion in Cyprus, dating back to the end of the 4th – beginning of the 5th century AD.”

Archaeologists believe their discovery belongs to the category of world discoveries, although they have not studied it carefully and in detail.

Source: Novosti