<div dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/these-ancient-weights-helped-create-europe-s-first-free-market-more-3000-years-ago">https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/these-ancient-weights-helped-create-europe-s-first-free-market-more-3000-years-ago</a><br><div><br></div><div>Museum collection mining finds standard weights:</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif">To their surprise, more than 2000 such objects crafted over the course of 2000 years and an area spanning nearly 5000 kilometers </span><a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2105873118" style="box-sizing:inherit;color:rgb(55,88,138);text-decoration-line:none;font-weight:700;font-family:Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif">weighed nearly the same amount</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif">—between 8 and 10.5 grams from Great Britain to Mesopotamia. Over the time spans involved, the consistency was remarkable, they report today in the </span><cite style="box-sizing:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</cite><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif">. “It is like we were still using the Roman systems of measurement [today], with just some minor variations,” Ialongo says.</span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>roughly a generous dime bag of weed in the jersey suburbs of the 1960's.</div><div><br></div><div>via hackernews</div><div><br></div><div><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif">-- rec --</span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px"><br></span></div></div>