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TL;DR

 

The US measures distance in feet. However, even if humans had not grown feet, the general concept of distance would still exist.

 

Similarly, if there are no solar days on this planet, they wouldn't be using a unit of time based on a solar day; but that doesn't mean that the locals are oblivious to the general concept of time progression.

TL;DR

The US measures distance in feet. However, even if humans had not grown feet, the general concept of distance would still exist.

Similarly, if there are no solar days on this planet, they wouldn't be using a unit of time based on a solar day; but that doesn't mean that the locals are oblivious to the general concept of time progression.

Edit:
A definition for a meter was then drafted, which may have tweaked the actual distance of a meter, since they used a rounded definition: one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the pole. However, before they decided to define a meter as such, they were already aware of roughly the unit of measurement they were looking for. If the outcome of this definition would have been 1mm or 1km, then they would have used a different definition for a meter, rather than define the meter as whatever the outcome of the definition is. Therefore, the decision came before the definition.

Why was this bar exactly that length? No reason. They just had to pick anything, really, so they picked this particular distance.
The only real consideration that was made is that the chosen distance was sensical to humans, e.g. it's impractical to define a unit of distance based on soemthing a human cannot perceive, whether it's the width of an electron or the diameter of the sun. These are not intuitive because we have no way to easily see this distance or use it for comparative purposes.

TL;DR

The US measures distance in feet. However, even if humans had not grown feet, the general concept of distance would still exist.

Similarly, if there are no solar days on this planet, they wouldn't be using a unit of time based on a solar day; but that doesn't mean that the locals are oblivious to the general concept of time progression.

Why was this bar exactly that length? No reason. They just had to pick anything, really, so they picked this particular distance.
The only real consideration that was made is that the chosen distance was sensical to humans, e.g. it's impractical to define a unit of distance based on something a human cannot perceive, whether it's the width of an electron or the diameter of the sun. These are not intuitive because we have no way to easily see this distance or use it for comparative purposes.