There is no need to downvote. The Romans were the first to use the unit of long ... | Hacker News

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		yannis on Sept 18, 2011 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Latitude doesn’t exactly mean what I thought There is no need to downvote. The Romans were the first to use the unit of long distance mille passuum (literally "a thousand paces" in Latin, where each pace was two steps) and hence back to the human body! (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man).

cromulent on Sept 19, 2011 [–]

That specific mile you are talking about is not one of the examples I am talking about. Have a look at nautical miles, sea miles, and geographic miles and you will find they were based on the Earth at times during that period. Apparently the Chaldeans used an Earth-based "mile" also.

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