List of human-based units of measurement
None
None
This article
needs additional citations for
verification
.
Please help
improve this article
by
adding citations to reliable sources
. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "List of human-based units of measurement" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( June 2023 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message ) |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Thumb-up.jpg/220px-Thumb-up.jpg)
This is a list of units of measurement based on human body parts or the attributes and abilities of humans ( anthropometric units ). It does not include derived units further unless they are also themselves human-based. These units are thus considered to be human scale and anthropocentric . A cross-cultural review of body-based measurement systems has found such units to be ubiquitous worldwide. [1]
Area
Length
- Ald - the distance between a man's outstretched arms
- Assbā - Arabic finger
- Condylos - middle joint of finger
- Cun - width of the human thumb, at the knuckle
- Dactylos - Ancient Greek finger breadth
-
Digit
- length of a human finger
- Digitus - Ancient Roman digit
- Etzba - fingerbreadth
- Fathom - the distance between the fingertips of a human's outstretched arms
- Finger
- Fistmele - the measure of a clenched hand with the thumb extended
- Gradus - Ancient Roman step
- Hand - breadth of a female/male human hand
- Klafter - German measure of outstretched hands
- League - the distance a person can walk in an hour (by one definition)
- Orgyia - Ancient Greek fathom
- Parasang - the distance an infantryman could march in a predefined period of time
- Pygmē - distance from elbow to base of fingers
- Sazhen - Russian fathom
- Shaftment - width of the fist and outstretched thumb
- Span - width of a human hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger
- Spithamē - Ancient Greek span
- Zeret - Biblical span
Paces
- Haploun bēma - Ancient Greek single pace
- Orgye - Arabic pace
- Pace - a full stride, from heel to heel
- Passus - the pace step of a single legionary
Ells
-
Ell
- Ell (Scots) - length of an average person's arm
- Elle - German ell
- Amah - Biblical ell
Cubits
Palms
- Cabda - Arabic palm
- Chetvert/Piad - Russian span/palm
- Palaistē/dōron - Ancient Greek palm
- Palm - breadth of four fingers
- Palmus - Ancient Roman palm
- Tefah/Tefach - Biblical palm
Inches
Feet
- Foot - length of the human foot
- Arabic foot
- Fuß - German foot
- Russian fut - Russian foot
- Tatar fut - Tatar foot
- Pes - Roman foot
- Pous - Greek foot
Loudness
Mass
- Picul - the weight a person can carry
Time
Volume
- Choenix - a man's daily grain ration
- Finger tip unit
- Koku - the amount of rice needed to feed a person for a year
- Japanese masu - the amount of rice needed to feed a person for a day
Miscellaneous
- Garn - unit of measure for symptoms resulting from space adaptation syndrome ; equal to complete incapacitation; named for Jake Garn
See also
- Ancient Mesopotamian units of length
- Anthropic units#In measurement , human scale units
- Anthropometry – Measurement of the human individual
- German obsolete units of measurement
- History of measurement
- Persian units of measurement
- Swedish units of measurement
- Units of measurement
- Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution
Current |
|
||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Background |
|
||||||||||||
Historic |
|
||||||||||||
Ancient | |||||||||||||
List articles | |||||||||||||
Other |
References
- ↑ Kaaronen, Roope; Manninen, Mikael; Eronen, Jussi (2023). "Body-based units of measure in cultural evolution" . Science . 380 (6648): 948–954. doi : 10.1126/science.adf1936 . Retrieved 13 June 2023 .