- Jan 3, 2018
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I did not know that they used other materials, thank you!You know that they don't always use sand for those things, right?
Powdered marble for example. Blends of tin and lead oxides are another.
It just needs to be granular.
And yes, river sand can be used. Sand is just basically ground up rock and any country with a river system would have sand.
It makes perfect sense and seems rather obvious, now you've said it & I'm no longer ensconced with thoughts of just sand.
But I'm referring to places receiving the phrase "sands of time", if they are not familiar with sand, rather than them using different materials for sand timers, per se.
So, if they used powdered marble and called it "powmarb", or something, other than "sand", would "sands of time" mean anything to them?
I can see "sand" used as just a generic term, for any powdered rock, but presumably not for tin & lead oxide.
If those people always measured time using metals, "sands of time" would seem rather odd, as opposed to "metals of time", or something similar.
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