The Rise of Rurik

Chapter 43: Stika's Beautiful Coincidence

Veria is in charge of some "standard unit measuring tools", and she hopes that the "rope ruler" in the hands of the tribes is the exact same length for herself, the so called standard stika.

In reality, how could it be as simple as she thought, and what Veria has mastered is really that standard? Actual and allied tribes in the South, each tribe's so called "standard one stika rope ruler" has a small gap. So when trading linen and hides, merchants always add another thumb's length.

After all, there are only more or less, and no one will suffer a big loss.

Veria happily showed: "This rope is a stika length. It measures the length of sackcloth and hides, and naturally it can also measure your height. Now take off your leather boots and keep standing up easily."

"OK!"

Rurik stood up quickly, and he had another plan in his mind, so he used his own height measured in the local unit of length to estimate the difference between a stika and a standard one meter.

Maybe the difference isn't that big.

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

His estimate was correct!

However, several units of length that have been commonly used in Scandinavia are actually very similar to the metric units of length millennia later, and even to 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. They calculated the different shadow lengths between Paris and Alexandria at the vernal equinox through an immediate method, and then used the ancient unit of length to measure the distance, and they calculated the arc length from Paris to the pressure mountain on the surface of the earth.

With the arc length, the false 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 circle of the earth is artificially determined to be 40,000 kilometers.

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

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

It's a wonderful coincidence that the two "one meters" are very similar.

Rurik's height was measured, and because of the markings on the rope ruler, it was always divided equally, and it was divided into ten parts.

It is not difficult to make tenths, the rope ruler must be tenthed, because people have ten fingers.

The reason why humans unanimously love decimal is because people have ten fingers.

However, on both sides of the East and West and even in the isolated American continent, civilized groups have invariably born a worship of mysticism to the decimal system.

In Europe, because the Vikings were indeed subordinate to the huge Germanic group, quite a few cultural factors were the same.

Their various languages share a common origin, and they uniquely label the readings of numbers from one to twelve.

In terms of trade, high-level currencies correspond to twelve low-level currencies.

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

Rurik stood up obediently, and Veria, hunched over, tried to measure him with a rope ruler.

"Not bad, it seems that you have surpassed a stika." Veria shook his head.

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

"No. You will grow taller, and your shortness will only be temporary. For you, I need a new tool."

After a while, Veria took out a group of elongated rope rulers, which according to him were specially used for cutting curtain curtains, and the total length of the rope rulers also had 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, but unfortunately no one has seen those giants, not even me, who has lived for seventy years. Ordinary men I know can usually grow to a stika and an ell, and half an ell. I only remember your father's father's father, who was close to the height of two stikas, and that was very old. At that time, I was only your age. "

Regarding the description of numbers, perhaps Europeans have not thought of it since ancient times, numbers can be accurately described with very simple syllables.

In this regard, the oriental nation or because of the characteristics of their own language, it is easy to do this.

Under Rurik's body, there has always been an oriental soul hidden. He really understands Veria's description of the number, which is "1.75stika" when converted into an oriental way of saying.

Think about it a little, like the Russians a thousand years later, maybe their superb mathematical level is due to their extremely long number pronunciation, and the complexity of describing a long number, to torture.

In this respect alone, perhaps the French are far worse off. When describing a long number such as "eighty", they are clearly listing an arithmetic problem in the air to interpret it as "eighty".

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

She explained the result with a complicated description. Rurik's mind was very clever. He knew a precise value, but it was not clear whether the comparison of stika and "meter" was close.

"Maybe, a seven-year-old boy should be about 120 centimeters. European children should grow a little earlier than Orientals, and it should not be too early."

"However, the food in this era is still too scarce, I will definitely not grow too tall, and there are no real burly men in the tribe."

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

Rurik did some calculations in his head, but he really could not have imagined that the error of two units of measurement in different time and space was surprisingly small.

He tentatively thought that he was only about 120 centimeters. In fact, he also realized that with his age and the current living conditions of the tribe, it was quite good to be able to grow to his current height in a healthy manner.

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

"Your height?"

"Yes! I'm still worried that I won't grow strong. I want to be taller and stronger than my father."

Veria was very happy to hear it, she patted the child's head: "very ambitious! You must 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. You're not very tall now, but you have potential."

"Should I eat more for this purpose?"

"That's right. Like more meat, my boy." Veria breathed a sigh of relief. "In a few days, the people who went north to hunt will be back. Pray for your father, if he can catch Live with more deer and you can keep eating meat until the frozen bay melts."

Rurik nodded deeply, reindeer meat was better than seal meat or other fish meat.

In fact, in terms of meat-eating, this is also something that Rurik felt worthy of consideration.

The Ross tribe needed a lot of wool, and when the weather was warm, many rowed south with their allies, trading wool for Roman silver coins from Novgorod, or for beast hides, and there was The "invisible hand" regulates the prices of various commodities.

The Ross tribe themselves would make yarns from wads of unprocessed wool, and they were woven into sweaters by women. The sweaters obtained by this manual processing are digested internally, and no one will be happy to use sweaters as a commodity. Likewise, the purchased flax they make themselves into twine and further spun.

For small scale printing and dyeing of various wool and twine, the tribe has a very traditional and primitive "moss printing and dyeing technique", and large-scale printing and dyeing is not enough.

They get a lot of wool but few sheep, and even more rare cattle. Allies in the South raised sheep for wool and cattle for milk.

The absolute lack of productivity made it impossible for the ancestors of the Swedes to frantically eat these "grazing production machines", unless it was a cold snap, they would eat frozen cattle and sheep.

The location of Roseburg is further north, which is colder, and because of the lack of pastures, the cost-effectiveness of animal husbandry is very poor. Only marine fishing and hunting herds are the most stable ways to obtain meat.

Rurik understood the deliciousness of mutton and beef, and he cherished both meats during the seven years of his new life. On the contrary, as if reindeer meat were readily available, as if hunters were further north, where the forests and mossy moors were full of roaming herds of reindeer.

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