The Nicobarese, a people who inhabit several islands in the Bay of Bengal, calculate the distance between one island and another according to the number of coconuts they drink on the way. Meanwhile, the latest definition of the meter, collected by the Spanish Metrology Center, says that it is equivalent to the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during 1/299792458 of a second. Which of the two measures is more understandable? And more useful? The analysis of traditional measurement standards used in almost 200 cultures, published in Science, now shows that in most cases the human body was and still is used as a universal rule.
