There are times when the world seems particularly illogical. Among the many reasons people give for this, our system of measuring things gets the occasional mention. Why, if only we used logical metric stuff everywhere!
In large measure the system you use on a daily basis is what you are used to. When in England I get acclimated, so to speak, and know that a 30 degree day there is sweltering hot, while the same 30 degree day back home (in my usual excavation time of April/May) is dreary and has a nasty chill.
If used regularly any system works. Perhaps not for scientific endeavors but just fine for staples of conversation like the weather. Some of the old measures actually have a basis in our daily lives, or at least the daily lives of our predecessors.
One foot used to be the length of, well, one human foot. Logical, although people have always had feet of variable sizes.....
Consider the "Big Foot" Roman shoes unearthed at the Magna site recently...
In fairness this specimen is being held close to the camera, in the manner of proud fishermen everywhere, but its pretty darned big. There's a whole video on these guys....
An inch derives from a foot. In Roman times an "uncia" was one twelfth of a foot. Uncia gives us the word inch. Efforts in later times to standardize it as say, the width of a thumb, encountered obvious difficulties.
If you are having a hard time fathoming these off hand measuring units, well, a fathom is simply the distance of the outstretched arms of a good sized mariner. That's about six feet.
Early folks were big on measurements that related to their daily lives. Most of them were farmers. So an acre - although initially just a term for forest land - evolved into the amount of land a team of oxen could plow in one day. Distantly the word might have a joint origin with agri as in agriculture.
And of course we have miles. As I have documented previously, one Roman mile was one thousand strides of a soldier, or mille pacem. As measurements go its pretty useful. As are yards, the rough distance of one such stride. I'm still using the latter getting ready for deer hunting season where distances to sight in rifles and crossbows are not given in meters.
The meter of course is a French construct. But lets not let them off the hook entirely. If you go back to define an acre it once was considered one furlong (660 feet) by four rods (66 feet). Rods are an almost entirely extinct form of measurement but weirdly portages in the Boundary Waters Canoe area are still given in rods. Why? Well its a bit obscure, but I blame the French. That part of the world was explored and mapped by Voyageurs, who were using canoes about one rod (16.5 feet) long. So a canoe length as a standard of measurement made as much sense as anything else. Considering that most of these guys were traveling light and not bringing along the marking chains to survey a furlong!
