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IV.—How were the Primitive Weight Standards fixed?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
In previous articles I have shown that the oldest Greek unit of weight, the talent of gold in the Homeric Poems, was identical with the cow or value of a cow, that the same identity existed between the cow in Italy and the gold unit (itself the same as the Homeric Talanton) which lies at the base of the Roman system, and that the like relation existed between cow and gold unit in Sicily. I had further advanced the suggestion that we ought to seek for the origin of the weight standard or standards from which probably all systems in the Old World, modern as well as ancient (save the modern French), have been derived, arguing that as the cow or ox was the most widely diffused common unit of barter, it was natural that when metals came into use as a medium of exchange, the metallic unit would naturally represent the value of the older unit of barter. Ordinary law of supply and demand would fix more or less accurately the amount of gold which one man would be willing to give, and another man be willing to accept for an ox. One point however I did not make clear, and that was how it came to pass that primitive men were able to fix with what practically was a high degree of accuracy the amount of gold which represented the value of an ox. It is, I think, this difficulty which is supposed to surround the process of fixing accurately the metallic unit thus derived which has induced metrologists to make up their minds that weight units could not have been arrived at empirically, and in consequence of this to seek their origin in the scientific astronomy of Babylonia.
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- Metrological Notes
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1889
References
page 94 note 1 I am indebted for all these facts relating to wheat grains in England to Mr. F. Seebohm, the author of the English Village Community.
page 95 note 1 We saw above that 24 grains of Troy weight when introduced into England were equal to 32 grains of wheat, or in the proportion of 3: 4. By the quotations given above we learn that the siliqua was equal to 3 grains of barley, and 4 grains of wheat; hence barley grains are to wheat as 3: 4. From this it follows that the Troy grain is nothing more than the barleycorn, which had been used in preference to the grain of wheat in part of the Roman Empire. Furthermore this relation between barleycorns and wheat can be proved as an actual fact. In September 1887 I placed in a balance 32 grains of wheat, and 24 grains of barley, taken from ricks of corn grown on the same field, near Cambridge, and repeated the experiment thrice; each time they balanced so evenly that a half-grain weight turned the scale either way. Again it is easy to see that the same proportion exists between wheat grain and Troy grain. A grain of Scotch wheat = ·047 gramme, and the Troy grain = ·064 gramme. ·047 × 4 = ·188; ·064 × 3 = ·192. For all practical purposes therefore 4 wheat grains = 3 Troy grains with an error of .0024, less probably than the difference between individual grains.
page 96 note 1 I owe this fact to the kindness of Sir Thomas Wade.
page 96 note 2 My colleague, Professor Hartog, informs me that in Java, grain (padi or para) is not only unit of weight but also of numeration.