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In a way, there are parallels with a type system. Yards, a measure taken from a human limb, are for fabric, furlongs are for arable land, and miles (a thousand
by mannykannot 9y ago
In a way, there are parallels with a type system. Yards, a measure taken from a human limb, are for fabric, furlongs are for arable land, and miles (a thousand paces) for roads. Prior to the need for exercises in teaching arithmetic to the masses, it might have seemed rather pointless (if not exactly a type error) to express the measurement of one thing in the units for another.
- TremendousJudge 9y agoIn fact, land wasn't really measured in units of area as much as it was measured in units of productivity (ie bushels), which was much more useful to know
- vram22 9y agoAnd distances (on land and maybe sea too) were long ago measured in interesting units like maybe an arrow shot (distance an arrow can travel) and such like (from my memory of reading legends as a kid, both Indian and probably Western or other ones) :) E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojana
- InitialLastName 9y agoAn acre (which is still used in the US for land measurement) is roughly the amount of land a team of oxen can plough in a day.
- TremendousJudge 9y agoAnd a league is the distance a person can walk in an hour. The actual distance doesn't actually matter; two places can be 5 leagues away and be at different distances. However, it'll take you 5 hours to get to any of them, be it because different quality roads or elevation changes
- mbfg 9y agoReally? an acre is quite small. i find it hard to believe that a team of oxen can't do much more.