Animals measure distances and weight for their survival. On the other hand, stemming from their need to communicate to live in society, humans created languages and, later, established the standards of measuring. Whether for moving around, portioning food, making tools, or calculating the weight of objects and animals, measurement standards arise from this need that was already present in human activities in the age of chipped stone and has been with us ever since. Nowadays, most of the world's population uses meters and centimeters to measure distances. These standards come from the need to establish comparisons that allow trade between peoples and also from political and social disputes.
All civilizations of antiquity have some kind of measurement system. In the Egyptian civilization, the measurement system was fundamental for the maintenance of its Bureaucratic State, which guided the collection of taxes on agriculture. It was the scribes who controlled the measurements, which were based on human body proportions. For weight, the Egyptians, responsible for the invention of scales in 5,000 BC, used animal-shaped standards, which were highly regarded by society to the point of being buried with the pharaohs.
