CHAPTER VII.
The Weight Systems of China and Further Asia.
Subiectos Orientis orae
Seras et Indos.
Hor. Carm. I. 12. 56.
We have now found that within the area where our
weight standards arose the ox was universally diffused, and
regarded as the chief and most general form of property and
medium of exchange; that over the same area gold was found to
be more or less equally distributed in antiquity; that the
metallic unit is found in all cases adapted to the chief unit of
barter, whether that be ox or reindeer, beaver skin, or squirrel,
as soon as peoples have learned the use of metal; and finally
that over our special area from the Atlantic to Central Asia the
cow at various times and places retained a value which fluctuated
only from 120 to 140 grains of gold. When therefore
we recall the fact, also pointed out above, that the gold unit
employed from Gaul to Central Asia was one that only fluctuated
from 120 to 140 grains, and when we recollect further that
this unit in the ancient Greek Epic is called not a talent but an
ox, when prices, and not merely the actual ingots of gold are
mentioned, the conclusion follows that not merely in Greece but
in all the other countries the gold unit represented originally
simply the conventional value of the cow as the immemorial
unit of barter.
Next follows an important question, How was the primitive weight standard fixed? In other words, how did mankind arrive at the general opinion that a weight of gold of about
