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Standards of measure in the Jemdet Nasr

Same reason as for Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Standards of measure in the Copper Age above. In this case, various values are filled in. But the entire concept of a table with exact 1/100 mm units is really meaningless. The subject is already covered, as mentioned. Egil 08:52, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, as above. Proto t c 09:21, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Rktect 6:03, 5 August 2005 (EST)

Looking at unit standards of measure comparatively by cultures

makes it much easier to see who shared measures with whom.

In this case in particular I would point out this is a work in progress

since it takes time both to do the data entry and translate the cites

from the original languages.

The standards of the Jemdet Nasr are both similar to and different from

copper age or iron age or medieval standards. In many cases they are better

documented by weights than by land units because this is the period when

the Sumerians first became heavily engaged in trade with Melluha, Makkan,

Dilmun and Egypt and first needed agreed upon international standards

of weights and measures.

Its the period in which the first archaeological and written evidence

of standards appears and in many cases the values of goods and services

are directly related to their standards of measure.

Traders moved overland, up rivers and along coasts which they surveyed.

Rivers like the Indus, Tigris, Euphrates and Nile connected with the Erythrian Sea

In the case of the Nile by means of overland portages and eventually a canal

As the Sumerian and Hurrian traders moved into Syrio-Anatolia well in advance of

any conquering armies they carried with them standards of measure for

commerce and agriculture.

These Sumerian units are not always already well established in the popular literature

Sometimes they are found in obscure technical publications written in dead languages

copper and iron age units are easier to document and have much more accessible web sources

so only now are they begining to emerge on line as citable primary sources.

As to giving their values to the nearest whole mm rather than to several

decimals of mm, Sumerian standards are not precise to decimal mm

or variant to 10's of mm and generally best established to +/- 1 mm per foot.

For those cultures for whom there is a written contemporary primary reference

to sharing a standard (as with the rod of Gudea) which was cited on the

discussion page for ancient weights and measures, there are long term

investigations of the units involved and the results

are now considered basic historical fact.

In the past many people have applied an ethnocentric perspective

to "their measures" stating that they are "Anglo Saxon", "German",

"Danish" French or "English" when they actually have much longer

histories that have been explored in the literature.

Being able to see the connection broken down by conventional archaeological

period rather than simply lumped to gether as ancient makes the similarities

and differances much clearer

The objection that these studies are original research is also invalid

as their original sources have been cited on the discussion page and

in some cases transcriptions of the original ancient language with

translations given in English