In ancient times, a person served as a measure of weight and length, i.e. weight - how much he can lift on his shoulders, length - how far he holds out his hand.
Antique measures of length were represented by a system that included concepts such as versts, sazhen, arshin, span, elbow, and apex.
So, consider the basic terms. Arshin is a measure of length, which equals 0.7112m (in the modern dimension). For arshin, it was customary to take a measuring ruler on which the divisions in the vertices were plotted.
Antique length measures have different versions of their origin. The first interpretation of arshin is the length of a human step while walking on flat terrain at an average pace (about seventy centimeters). The same definition was taken as the base value for the designation of such terms as verst and soot. Even when considering the structure of the word “arshin”, we can see that its root “ar” from the Old Russian language means “surface of the earth” or “earth”, which confirms the opinion of linguists that ancient Russian measures of length were used to determine the distance traveled on foot.
There was another name for this measure - “step”, i.e. the account was carried out by the steps of an adult (“small fathoms” or “official fathoms”).
An old Russian track measure of length is a mile and a half denoting the distance that was traveled from one turn of a plow to another during plowing. In parallel with the synonym “field”, these two concepts have been used for quite some time as ancient measures of length. During the reign of Peter the Great, one verst was equated to 500 sazhenes (1066.8 m in modern terms). In 1649, a “milestone verst” was adopted, equal to a thousand fathoms. A little later (the 18th century), the concept of track verst (five hundred verst) began to be used.
As small measures of length in Russia, the “span” was used as the base value, which from the 17th century was considered the “quarter of arshin”. From here came such ancient measures of length as two points (half a span) and points (a quarter span).
One of the most common measures of length in Russia was the “sage”, which has certain differences in purpose and size. There were up to ten such differences. For example, “fly fathom” was the distance between the ends of the widely spread fingers of an adult male. And the term “oblique fathom” is determined by the distance from the toe of the left foot to the middle finger of the right hand raised up.
There is also such a definition of length in ancient Russia as the "elbow", which was equal to the length of the arm from the fingertips to the elbow. Its size, according to various sources, ranges from 38 to 47 cm. However, already from the 16th century this term was supplanted by the term “arshin”.
Ancient measures of weight in Russia were represented by the following terms:
- proportion (0.044 g);
- spool (4.27 g);
- pound (hryvnia), equal to 96 spools (0.41 kg);
- a pound equal to 40 pounds (16.38 kg).
The share was the smallest Old Russian unit of measurement of mass and was equal to 1/96 of the spool. The spool, in turn, was equated to 1/96 pounds and denoted a gold coin.
The pound was a designation and measure of weight, as well as a monetary unit. This term is often used in determining the weight in retail. Used it for weighing precious metals (silver and gold).
Pood equated to forty pounds.
There was also such a measure of weight as the Berkovets, which is actively used in wholesale trade for weighing large volumes of goods (for example, wax or honey). In Russia, under this term, a weight of ten pounds was adopted, which was equal to the mass of a barrel of wax rolled by one person on a merchant boat. The first mention of the Berkovets was found in sources dating from the 12th century (charter of Novgorod merchants from Prince Vsevolod Gabriel Mstislavovich).