Metrology seemed a very complex subject before John Neal and John Michell re-defined it in a very compelling and much more simple fashion. All the ancient measures were first found in different regions of the world and so became known by the name of a civilisation or country. This implied and later led to the assumption that these measures had (a) been uniquely developed there in (b) an arbitrary fashion.

But ancient measures are not arbitrary and indeed are all related to a single and unified system. This simplicity would have been obvious had measures not been slightly "varied", for precise reasons. Aside from these variations, John Neal has identified that the English foot is the basis of the whole system – used as the number one within it – and all the other types of foot are, at root, rationally related using integer fractions of an English foot. What might appear to be a rather partisan approach should be understood in the knowledge that the English foot did not come from England...... click link below:

This article  formed an appendix of Sacred Number