Ian Kelly wrote:
Remember, the cubit was based on the length of the forearm, so it's not like it was a terribly precise measurement to begin with;
Let's not sell them short. Just because it was based on a forearm doesn't mean they didn't have a precise standard for it, any more than people who measure things in "feet" do it by plonking down their own foot. No doubt it wasn't as precise as what we have nowadays, but it was probably a lot better than human body part variations.
they might not have understood significant figures, but they probably wouldn't have been overly concerned about the difference between thirty and thirty-one.
If you're building something the size of a pyramid, that could add up to quite a lot of error. -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
