Chapter 43： stika beautiful coincidence

Villa is in charge of some "standard units of measuring tools". She hopes that the "rope ruler" in the hands of the tribes is exactly the same length as the one given to her. The so-called standard stika.

How could it be as simple as she thought, and Veria's own control is really so standard? In fact, there is a slight gap between the so-called "standard-stika ruler" of each tribe of allies in the south. Therefore, when trading linen and animal skins, merchants always have to increase the length of a thumb.

After all, there is only a lot more, and no one will suffer a big loss.

Villa happily showed: "This rope is a stika length. It measures the length of linen cloth and animal skins. It can also measure your height. Now take off your leather boots and keep standing up easily."

"Ok!"

Lurik stood up quickly, and he also had another calculation in his mind, so with the help of his own height measured in local length units, he estimated the difference between a stika and a standard one meter.

Maybe the difference is not great.

Because he saw that Veria didn't have to stretch his arms at all, the hemp rope was stretched straight, and it even seemed that it was not much different from the "one meter" in his own concept.

His estimate is correct!

The several length units that have been commonly used locally in Scandinavia are actually very similar to the metric length unit after a thousand years, and even the original "one meter", which is purely a romantic coincidence.

Because of another plane, French scientists hope to invent a unit of length that can be used throughout Europe. In an immediate way, they calculated the different shadow lengths between Paris and Alexandria at the equinox, and then used the ancient unit of length to measure the distance, stupefied to calculate the arc length from Paris to the port of Pressure Mountain on the surface of the earth.

With the arc length, the imaginary earth is a perfect ball, and it is logical to calculate the circumference of the entire sphere. Therefore, the distance from the North Pole to the equator is considered to be 10,000 kilometers, and the earth's circle is artificially determined to be 40,000 kilometers.

Of course, because of the longitude difference between Paris and Alexandria, the length of "one meter" obtained from the initial survey data is too small.

The original scientific survey was in the first half of the nineteenth century, but Rurik’s current era is the first half of the ninth century.

The two "one meter" are very similar, which is a wonderful coincidence.

measured the height of Rurik, because there is a mark on the rope ruler, it has been divided into equal parts, but it is divided into ten parts.

It is not difficult to divide into tenths. The rope ruler must be divided into tenths, because people have ten fingers.

The reason why humans love the decimal system by coincidence is because people have ten fingers.

However, in both the East and the West, and even the isolated American continent, civilized groups have invariably born a cult of mysticism towards the binary system.

In Europe, because the Vikings are indeed subordinate to this huge group of Germans, many cultural factors are the same.

Their various languages ​​have a common origin, and they all make unique annotations for the numbers from one to twelve.

Reflected in trade, high-level currencies correspond to twelve low-level currencies.

Of course, this cultural phenomenon is the same in Eastern Rome.

Lurik stood obediently, and Villa crouched and tried to measure his body with a rope ruler.

"Not bad, it seems that you have more than one stika." Veria shook his head.

"Grandma, do you think I should be shorter?"

"No. You will grow tall, your shortness is only temporary. For you, I need a new tool."

After a while, Veria took out a long version of the rope ruler. According to him, the rope ruler is specially designed for cutting curtains. The total length of the rope ruler is also three stikas.

She said something in her mouth: "It is impossible for a mortal to have the height of three stikas. Only the giants of Asgard can. Unfortunately, no one has seen those giants, even if I have lived for seventy years. Men, generally can grow to one stika, another ell, and half an ell as high as that. I only remember your father’s father’s father, he was close to the height of two stikas, that’s a very old thing. At that time, I Only your age."

Regarding the description of numbers, perhaps Europeans have never thought of it since ancient times that numbers can be accurately described in very simple syllables.

In this regard, Eastern peoples can easily do this because of the characteristics of their own language.

Rurik has always hidden an Eastern soul under his body. He really understands Veria's description of numbers, and converted into an Eastern way of saying "1.75stika".

Think about it a little bit, like the Russians a thousand years later, maybe their superb mathematics level is that their extremely long number pronunciation and the complexity of describing a long number have made the torture perfect.

On this aspect alone, perhaps the situation of the French is even worse. Describing a longer number such as "eighty", they clearly list an arithmetic problem to explain that this is "eighty".

Finally, Veria measured the height of Rurik, who was only seven years old, which was barely 1.2 stika.

She explained the result with a complicated description. Rurik's mind is very smart. He knows a precise value, but it is not clear whether the contrast between stika and "m" is close.

"Perhaps 120 cm for a seven-year-old boy should be about the same. European children should grow earlier than Orientals, and it should not be too early."

"However, the food in this era is still too scarce. I will certainly not grow too tall, and there is no real sturdy man in the tribe."

"If it doesn't work, I will treat a stika as the future metric system and one meter?"

Leurik made some calculations in his mind. He really did not expect that the error of two measurement units in different time and space is surprisingly small.

He thought he was only 120 centimeters, in fact, he also realized that at his age and the current living conditions of the tribes, it is quite good to be able to grow healthily to his current height.

Putting his thoughts aside for the time being, Rurik suddenly asked: "Grandma, is it normal for me to be like this?"

"your height?"

"Yes! I am still worried that I will not grow strong in the future. I hope to be taller and stronger than my father."

Veria was very happy to hear her. She patted the child's head: "Very ambitious! You have to know that when you can show your strong arms and muscles in public, you will gain the respect of many men and the hearts of many girls. Your height is not very high, but you have great potential."

"For this purpose, should I eat more?"

"That's right. For example, eat more meat, my child." Vilia let out a long sigh of relief. "In a few days, those hunting people will come back. Pray for your father, if he can catch it. If you live with more deer, you can keep eating meat until the frozen bay melts."

Lurik nodded deeply. Compared to seal meat or other fish, reindeer meat is more delicious.

In fact, with regard to meat eating, this is also something Rurik feels worthy of scrutiny.

The Rus tribe needs a large amount of wool. When the climate is warm, many people will row south with allies, using Roman silver coins obtained from Novgorod to trade wool, or trade through beast leather. This is true. The "invisible hand" regulates the prices of various commodities.

The Ross tribe themselves will make wool from the unprocessed masses of wool, which are knitted into sweaters by women. The sweaters obtained by this manual processing have been digested internally, and no one would be happy to use sweaters as a commodity. In the same way, the flax they bought was made into twine by themselves and further woven.

For the small-scale printing and dyeing of various woolen yarns, the tribe has a very traditional and primitive "moss printing and dyeing technique", but large-scale printing and dyeing will not work.

They get a lot of wool but rarely buy sheep, and cattle are even rarer. Allies in the South raise sheep for wool and cattle for milk.

The absolute lack of productivity made the ancestors of the Swedes not madly eat these "grazing production machines", unless the cold current invaded, they would eat frozen cattle and sheep.

Rossberg’s location is further north, it is also colder, and because of the lack of grassland, the price-performance ratio of animal husbandry is very bad. Only fishing in the ocean and hunting the herd are the most stable ways to obtain meat.

Lurik understands the delicacy of mutton and beef very well. In the seven years since he was born, both kinds of meat have been cherished. Contrary to them, it seems that reindeer meat is easily available, as if hunters go further north, where the forest and moss wasteland are filled with roaming reindeer herds.