Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/270

 There can be little doubt that the unit of the Babylonian system was the light shekel (Daric or ox-unit) of 130-5 grs. Troy. But I have shown that the Chaldaeans were aware of and made use of the method of fixing weight-units by means of grains of corn such as we have found to be the universal practice from Ireland to China, and we have at once removed all need for supposing that it was only when they had discovered a scientific method of metrology that the Chaldaeans constructed their weight-unit.

After what we have shown upon p. 115 concerning the methods employed in the buying and selling of corn, where it has been made clear that of all commodities corn is one of the very last to be weighed because of its bulkiness in proportion to its cheapness, I think no one will readily accept M. Aurè's ingenious hypothesis.

Are we not now justified in supposing that, just as the peoples of Mesopotamia had marked their seasons and time by primitive methods, and used their fingers and hands and feet as measures long before they dreamed of scientific methods, so that likewise they had employed for weighing their gold the natural weight-unit which lay ready to their hands in the wheat-ears that crowned their plains.

Let us now start with the light shekel as our unit. According to our argument it was nothing more than the amount of gold which represented the value of the cow, the unit of barter throughout all Europe, Asia and Africa, as it still is over considerable areas of both the latter continents. There is no reason for not believing that as among other people, all articles of property, utensils, weapons, clothes, ornaments and the various kinds of animals stand to one another in well-known relations of value, so the same principle was in full force among the Semites of Mesopotamia. We found that the wild tribes of Laos had a regular scale commencing with a hoe as their lowest unit, leading up through kettles and porcelain jars to the buffalo, their main unit; we also found