Imagine buying ten pounds of grain from someone who thinks a pound is whatever they feel it is. That sounds absurd today, but for much of history, it wasn't. Before agreed-upon standards, a measure was only as trustworthy as the person holding the scale, and trade between strangers depended on reputation, memory, and the hope that both sides meant the same thing. In our previous blog post, we met the merchant from Uruk (present-day Iraq) and the clay bulla he sealed around a