millia pasuum, literally “1,000 paces,” was a common unit of measure in the empire, and the basis of various modern miles. It was slightly shorter than the modern statute mile.
Interesting. Never realised that “mile” just means “thousand” (though it is kinda obvious in retrospect). And since the modern mile is 1760 yards, a kilometre is more of a mile than the actual mile.
Yeah, assuming that a yard is meant to approximate the stride of an adult human, who’s the Goliath-sized motherfucker with the 5’ 3" stride who took a thousand steps and called that a mile?
Far be it from me to defend the imperial syste- I love and daily work in metric, but you realize nearly all ancient measurement systems are created around commonplace physical measures (body parts, strides, etc.) and simple multiples thereof to make their use easy, yeah?
We’ve got a lot of tools at our disposal now to both standardize and make working with a decimal system a lot more doable than before.
mkwt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
millia pasuum, literally “1,000 paces,” was a common unit of measure in the empire, and the basis of various modern miles. It was slightly shorter than the modern statute mile.
Klear@quokk.au 2 months ago
Interesting. Never realised that “mile” just means “thousand” (though it is kinda obvious in retrospect). And since the modern mile is 1760 yards, a kilometre is more of a mile than the actual mile.
GraniteM@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah, assuming that a yard is meant to approximate the stride of an adult human, who’s the Goliath-sized motherfucker with the 5’ 3" stride who took a thousand steps and called that a mile?
Ruthalas@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Far be it from me to defend the imperial syste- I love and daily work in metric, but you realize nearly all ancient measurement systems are created around commonplace physical measures (body parts, strides, etc.) and simple multiples thereof to make their use easy, yeah?
We’ve got a lot of tools at our disposal now to both standardize and make working with a decimal system a lot more doable than before.