Other Units
Thom suggested that "There must have been a headquarters from which standard rods were sent out but whether this was in these islands or on the Continent the present investigation cannot determine."
Margaret Ponting has suggested that artefacts such as a marked bone found during excavations at Dail Mòr near Callanish, the Patrickholme bone bead from Lanarkshire and Dalgety bone bead from Fife in Scotland have shown some evidence of being measuring rods based on the Megalithic Yard in Britain. An Oak rod from the Iron Age fortified settlement at Borre Fen mearured 53.15 inches (135.0 cm) with marks dividing it up into eight parts of 6.64 inches (16.9 cm). Euan Mackie referred to five eights of this rod 33.2 inches (84 cm) as "very close to a megalithic yard". A Hazel measuring rod recovered from a Bronze Age burial mound in Borum Eshøj, East Jutland by P. V. Glob in 1875 mearured 30.9 inches (78 cm). Keith Critchlow suggested this may have shrunk 0.63 inches (1.6 cm) from the Megalithic Yard over 3000 years.
Thom made a comparison of his Megalithic Yard with the Spanish vara, the pre-metric measurement of Iberia, its value 2.7425 feet. Archaeologist Euan Mackie noticed similarities between the MY and a unit of measurement extrapolated from a long, marked shell from Mohenjo Daro and ancient measuring rods used in mining in the Austrian Tyrol. He suggested similarities with other measurements such as the ancient Indian gaz and the Sumerian šu-du3-a. Along with John Michell, Mackie also noted that it is the diagonal of a rectangle measuring 2 by 1 Egyptian remens. Jay Kappraff has noted similarity between the Megalithic Yard and the ancient Indus short yard of 33 inches (0.84 m). Anne Macaulay reported that the Megalithic Rod is equal in length to the Greek fathom of (2.072 metres (6.80 ft)) from studies by Eric Fernie of the Metrological Relief in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Read more about this topic: Megalithic Yard
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