Origin of Metres and Seconds?

I've been watching this excellent documentary tonight about how modern engineers are analyzing ancient technology...and noticed something new I never heard of before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUqb0wrxRw

Its VERY long, but at approx 1:08 and 1:18 there is a strong suggestion that the ancient Egyptians use what we now define as the METRE and the SECOND.

Units which were agreed upon as measurements only in the 1600s and 1700s.

How is this possible?

 

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(This video brings to mind Chariots of the Gods, the movie Stargate, documentaries about the Freemasons and Knights Templar, and fascination with subjects like Madame Blavatsky, Alistair Crowley, Edgar Cayce, and Qabalism.)

The only reference to time I saw in the video (around 1:18) was the correlation of the pyramid's geometry to c, to about 5 or 6 digits. This has to be a coincidence since, besides the precision in the meter and second which have no bearing on the ancient cultures, it would be impossible for ancient people to have any sense of c, and, if they did, they would have been doing more than just farming and herding and fighting over territory. Or at least they would have been doing it with lasers.

I also find it hard to believe that the methods used really carried 6 or 7 digits of precision needed to arrive at an answer precise to 5 or 6 digits. We're talking about surveying with a laser rangefinder to arrive at this conclusion, and precisely identifying "the" vertex of a rough-hewn and roughly set stone. Plus the capstones have been disturbed. Even if you could achieve this and still get c to 5 or 6 places, then you have to assume that the builders used laser surveying when laying out the foundation in the first place. For all the things which seem to correlate here's a huge disconnect.

The use of a meter as a standard is probably explained as the natural measure relative to human scale, fingertip to solar plexus, hip to soles of feet, etc., or even some measure taken from an animal's bones.

I wouldn't be surprised if the followers of Hermeticism handed down their own standards of weights and measures. But it seems unlikely that a unit as old as the pyramids was intentionally preserved in this manner.

More likely (if there is a connection at all) is that anyone who ventured to see the pyramids may have removed a 1-m stone. This might make a connection between the ancient era and the era of Hermes Trismegistus, after which it could have been handed down with the rest of their legacy.

I suspect you could pick any culture in any era and with sufficient digging and prodding, you could probably find golden ratios, or any other magic number you wish.

It's great sci-fi, but the reality of their existence as told in their writings is fairly mundane with a normal amount of superstition to explain the phenomena for which they had no science.

 

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Yes, although its not stated directly, this is the suggestion of the documentary as a whole...that whoever built the great pyramid used something more advanced than copper chisels and ropes.

And also, that they used the METRE as a unit of measurement. This is most explicitly described between 1:08 and 1:20...as the dimensions in metres multiplied/divided by 10 100 1000 add up to PI or the golden ratio 1.618

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

If there was a singular example this could be a coincidence...but several different examples???

 

The only vaguely probable way the metre could have been derived from Egyptian sources was as a result of Napoleon's military campaign in Egypt circa 1798-1801.

The metre was established by the French Academy of Sciences in December of 1799.

 

It seems Bonaparte effectively massacred the defending army with superior firepower, then launched a failed attack on Syria, and after about 6 months ended up abandoning his 30,000 troops to the Egyptian desert, in order to return to Paris.

I'm not sure what units of measurement were in place in Egypt by then. The system of antiquity was by then nearly 5000 years old. Even the Greek system brought to Egypt by Alexander the Great was already two millenia old.

But if you go back to some of the most ancient of Egyptian writings, it seems their basic unit of measurement was the cubit (about half a meter) so the premise that the meter was around in the era of the pyramid constructions seems to be a guess.

There aren't any extant writings from the construction era, but there is a relief showing the king laying out a pyramid temple using a rope. This is why the idea of high precision is probably wishful thinking.

As for the second....it seems they did use a 24-hour day, but not until the 2[sup]nd[/sup] c BC. Of course measurement of seconds would be problematic. Apparently Ptolemy (~2[sup]nd[/sup] c AD) came up with the division of the hour into 60 minutes.

On the other hand, this spans the rise of the followers of Hermes Trismegistus, then Gnosticism, and the secret cults that descended from them. So the idea that something was handed down for millennia through the cults seems possible. In that case, they were probably handing down a 2-cubit measure if it turned out to be close to a meter.

 

I'm surprised that the Egyptian cubit and the Sumerian cubit are almost exactly the same at 523mm and 518mm respectively. There was such a thing as a double-cubit measuring rod...at least one has been found.

But, how is the length of any unit conveyed in a text of words?

When the Ottoman Turks overran Constantinople (1453) many ancient books from the Byzantine libraries were saved by monks who fled to Italy.

One of them, Leonardo Pistoia brought the writings of the Hermetica to the Medici court in 1460...but most of these works are now believed to be no older than 100 CE.

 

The cubit was the length of a man's arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. So all cubits will be aproximately the same.

 

The figures could be wrong yes...perhaps even lies yes.

But if correct, the possibility of that many random coincidences pointing to the same conclusion is approx zero.

 

There is a very simple reason for the meter and the second. The meter is apprx. the length of a human step and the second is roughly the length of a human heartbeat. We have a strong disposition to devide length and time into these divisions. It would not surprise me at all to discover that nearly all systems of measurement have units similar in size to meters and seconds.

 

Yes that would be the natural reason, just as the reason for the cubit. It's the logical explanation.

This brought to mind the origins of musical tempo, which naturally hovers around the second mark, no doubt from the composer's own sense of his pulse.


@Carcano:

Speaking of Bonaparte, he is attributed with devising the the popular march cadence (e.g., 2/4 time, w/quarter note = 120) which would encourage his troops to move at 2m/s (7.2 km/hr), or two strides per (rest) heartbeat. It does seem to have a rational basis.

I notice that La Marseillaise seems to favor the Napoleonic tempo of 2m/s. Since it was written four years before the French Academy standardized the meter and second, I would put it in my top 10 list of possible influences. The connection would be that the downbeat is once a second and the length of an individual stride is about a meter.

You asked about how we know the length of a cubit. In the Egyptian system, 1 cubit = 6 palms, 1 palm = 4 fingers. For longer measurements they used rope. But I would imagine they marked off the rope by so many strides, with the recognition that 1 stride is about 2 cubits.

It would be an interesting challenge to attempt to reconstruct how the pyramids might have been laid out using ropes, and to take a shot at estimating the best case accuracy doing it that way.

As for James R's comment about confirmation bias, that was also my impression when they showed 5 or 6 digits of precision after comparing two measurements lifted off a drawing with a drafting compass (or divider). Try it. You be lucky to get two digits you're happy with.

As for coincidences, there's no coincidence in the fact that they knew geometry. From the extant papyri there is reason to believe that the ideas put forward in the video are off base. For example:

see

http://www.math.tamu.edu/~don.allen/history/egypt/node3.html

 

If I wanted to FIND any specific number in the dimensions of a randomly designed structure, it would take a lot of very complex calculating.

IF I spent enough time at it, and I was lucky, I might be able to find PI or C if I took the length divided by 10 times the width, multiplied by half the total area, minus a quarter of the circumference, etc, etc, etc.

It would be even more improbable to find a SECOND calculation equalling the same target number.

And to find a THIRD example would be astronomically improbable.

This is not what is described in the documentary.

The calculations are very uncomplicated, point to the same specific numbers, and are revealed in many different calculations...not just ONE lucky guess.

The question is really whether their measurements are correct or not.

I dont know.

 

I can demonstrate to anyone that its impossible to measure long distances accurately with ropes...for the simple reason that its impossible to maintain an even tension, which is variable depending on the length of the measurement.

Egyptian cubit measuring rods have been found in tombs, but without one handy I dont see how its exact length, or the length of a palm/finger could be communicated with words...as in an ancient text handed down through European history.