A lengthy footnote from page 69 of �The Map that Changed the World,� by
Simon Winchester (author of the bestseller �The Professor and the Madman,�
which some of you OED fans may have read):
�In Korea there has long been a tacit recognition that small earthly
processes, carried out over millions of years, can in the end have a
geologically significant result. There is in Korean mythology a famous
measuring unit that denotes a era long period of time. To gauge how long
that period is, one is asked to imagine a mountain made of solid granite,
EXACTLY ONE MILE HIGH. Once every thousand years an angel flies down from
heaven and brushes the summit of the hill with her wings. The unit of time
represents the number of years it would take for the angel and her
summit-brushing wing to erode the mountain down to sea level. Given long
enough, of course, she would do it. As would a stream, or even the
wind--providing that geological time was encompassing enough�and was far,
far longer than the mere six millennia allowed by Bishop Ussher.� (caps
added)
The obvious question is this: did Korean mythology really use a �mile� as
a unit of measurement?
(Bishop James Ussher was an Irish prelate who published �Annals of the
World,� in 1650, wherein he �calculated� that Creation began on Monday, 23
October 2004, at 9:00 a.m. in the morning. One cannot help but wonder
which time zone God was in when he started at 9:00 a.m.)
The book is a delightful scientific history, although I do not recall
seeing a single non-English unit of measurement in it. Of course, since
its subject matter covers roughly 1760 to 1850 in England, that it not at
all surprising.
Jim Elwell
