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Author Topic:   365 day calendar
andres
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 21 (163281)
11-26-2004 5:40 AM


Hello,
My name is Andres and this is the first time I am posting on this forum. I have a question that sometimes bothers me.
Does anyone know who where the first People/Civilization to use the 365 day calendar? And how many days are there in the Roman calendar and the Jewish (old) calendar?
I have seen some topics on the ages of Biblical characters, but it does not answer this question specifically.
I was just wondering to help me understand how people can think the earth is only 6000 years (365 day year) old.

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AdminNosy
Administrator
Posts: 4754
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Joined: 11-11-2003


Message 2 of 21 (163311)
11-26-2004 10:19 AM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
Approved as is but the last sentence starts to muddy the focus of the topic. Let's choose to discuss the calendar systems rather than earth age here ok?
This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 11-26-2004 10:20 AM

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 3 of 21 (163316)
11-26-2004 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by andres
11-26-2004 5:40 AM


Off the top of my head the Egyptians are the earliest people I know of who used a 365 day year. I believe the Romans did, too - certainly they did after the reforms of Julius Caesar (the Julian calendar is very close to the standard used in Europe and America - we use a reformed version called the Gregorian calendar after the Pope who instituted it).
The Jewish calendar even now does not use 365 days for a single year but it does feature a corrective measure - "intercalary days" added to the calendar every few years, so that the year never gets too far out of synchronisation with the solar year. So the average length of a year is still 365 days. Other lunar calendars (like the ancient Sumerian calendar or the modern Muslim calendar) usually do the same sort of thing.

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contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 21 (163317)
11-26-2004 11:07 AM


As I understand it the Babylonians had a 365-day year, although they used a lunar calendar in normal life. In fact pretty good calculations of the year length turn up very early in the history of civilisation; what seems to bog so many cultures down is that the numbers are messy and and cannot be neatly divided into one another, which probably drove the specialists to a frenzy of frustration, becuase none of the solutions were "neat".

  
Itachi Uchiha
Member (Idle past 5614 days)
Posts: 272
From: mayaguez, Puerto RIco
Joined: 06-21-2003


Message 5 of 21 (163323)
11-26-2004 11:47 AM


Calendars in all the different civilizations through history have been approximately 365 days. I dare to say that all of them were based on the study of the sun and/or moon. A year has always been measuered as an the approximate time the earth takes to complete it journey around the sun the same way a day has been measured as the approximate tie the earth takes to complete a revolution on its axis.

Ponlo todo en las manos de Dios y que se joda el mundo. El principio de la sabiduria es el temor a Jehova

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happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 6 of 21 (163345)
11-26-2004 2:43 PM


I may be completely wrong with this, but I seem to remember 360 as the original number of days in the year (hence 360 degrees in a circle). I seem to remember hearing that in connection with a tv show on the Egyptians.

Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 7 of 21 (163348)
11-26-2004 2:50 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by happy_atheist
11-26-2004 2:43 PM


The issue was always about how to bring the two major calendar driving events into sync, the sun and the moon. The most common Kludge was to make months 30 days long which came close to the lunar cycle and then throw in some arbitary number of non-counted days to synch up with the solar calendar. The would add the days as a bunch at the end or beginning of a year or place them a few at a time between months.
Of course, since neither the lunar or solar cycle work out to be a number that can evenly be divided, none of the calendars worked well over time. They all got out of kilter and so you needed a special class of people to keep track and fudge the final figures every year. They called them Priests.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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AdminNosy
Administrator
Posts: 4754
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Joined: 11-11-2003


Message 8 of 21 (163359)
11-26-2004 3:26 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by jar
11-26-2004 2:50 PM


Farmers
As farmers I can't see ancient peoples getting away with a year much off 365 days for long. They have to understand where they are relative to the right time so sew and so on.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 9 of 21 (163543)
11-27-2004 5:09 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by happy_atheist
11-26-2004 2:43 PM


Intelligent Calendar Design?
360 was considered a significant number, as was 60, in the egyptian form of numerology, thus the forcing of the calendar to that number. I recall something about gods having six fingers also being involved.
most early calendars were lunar, as is the jewish calendar to this day, and thus they need a fudge to fit the solar cycle. this means having "years" of different lengths in the jewish system.
from Jewish Calendar - Judaism 101 (JewFAQ):
A few years ago, I was in a synagogue, and I overheard one man ask another, "When is Chanukkah this year?" The other man smiled slyly and replied, "Same as always: the 25th of Kislev." This humorous comment makes an important point: the date of Jewish holidays does not change from year to year. Holidays are celebrated on the same day of the Jewish calendar every year, but the Jewish year is not the same length as a solar year on the Gregorian calendar used by most of the western world, so the date shifts on the Gregorian calendar.
The problem with strictly lunar calendars is that there are approximately 12.4 lunar months in every solar year, so a 12-month lunar calendar loses about 11 days every year and a 13-month lunar gains about 19 days every year. The months on such a calendar "drift" relative to the solar year. On a 12 month calendar, the month of Nissan, which is supposed to occur in the Spring, occurs 11 days earlier each year, eventually occurring in the Winter, the Fall, the Summer, and then the Spring again. To compensate for this drift, an extra month was occasionally added: a second month of Adar. The month of Nissan would occur 11 days earlier for two or three years, and then would jump forward 29 or 30 days, balancing out the drift.
In the fourth century, Hillel II established a fixed calendar based on mathematical and astronomical calculations. This calendar, still in use, standardized the length of months and the addition of months over the course of a 19 year cycle, so that the lunar calendar realigns with the solar years. Adar II is added in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years of the cycle. The current cycle began in Jewish year 5758 (the year that began October 2, 1997).
Obviously an indication of intelligent design in operation of the universe ....
(This is almost as much fun as declaring "pi" to equal 3.0 ...)
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

This message is a reply to:
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happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 10 of 21 (163652)
11-28-2004 7:47 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by RAZD
11-27-2004 5:09 PM


Re: Intelligent Calendar Design?
RAZD writes:
This is almost as much fun as declaring "pi" to equal 3.0
It would have made maths and physics a little easier if it WAS equal to three. Whoever designed the circle was just being mean!

This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 11 of 21 (163698)
11-28-2004 2:42 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by happy_atheist
11-28-2004 7:47 AM


Re: Intelligent Calendar Design?
you can always consider it a cosmic warning that there are no simple ways to understand the universe.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

This message is a reply to:
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andres
Inactive Member


Message 12 of 21 (163802)
11-29-2004 2:59 AM


365 day calendar
Thank you for the responses.
For some reason, I had always believed that the 365 day calendar was not so old, although apparently not.
Just one more thing, it the romans used a 365 day calendar, why does the dates related to Jesus change every year(except for X-mas): Holy week changes, the day he went into the desert changes. If the calendar was almost the same as ours, why not use a fixed date?

Replies to this message:
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Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 13 of 21 (163804)
11-29-2004 3:23 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by AdminNosy
11-26-2004 3:26 PM


Re: Farmers
AdminNosy writes:
quote:
As farmers I can't see ancient peoples getting away with a year much off 365 days for long.
But that's why the Julian reforms were needed: They were months off the actual date. Under the old system (753 BCE or 1 AUC for "anno urbis conditae), the spring equinox had moved three months by the 1st century BCE. The year was only 355 days long. Julius Caesar was exposed to the better calendar system in Egypt and in 45 BCE, he reformed the Roman calendar. That year, he extended the year to 445 days for that one year in order to get the calendar back in sync with the seasons and then set to 365 days with leap years being 366. Note that the Romans put the leap year day after the 23rd of February, creating a new 24th which would be repeated and then came the 25th. As this day was 6 days before the Kalends of March, it was called a "bissextile" and thus the term you sometimes hear for the leap day: Bisextile.
One should point out, though, that Caesar was killed just a few months after this.

Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

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Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 14 of 21 (163805)
11-29-2004 3:27 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by andres
11-29-2004 2:59 AM


Re: 365 day calendar
andres writes:
quote:
If the calendar was almost the same as ours, why not use a fixed date?
Because many of the big Christian holidays are actually converted Jewish holidays. Since the Jewish calendar is a lunar one, they wander through the solar calendar we have today as the lunar and solar calendars don't match.
For example, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

This message is a reply to:
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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 15 of 21 (163831)
11-29-2004 7:40 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by Rrhain
11-29-2004 3:27 AM


Re: 365 day calendar
Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
And that full moon is occasionally a fictitious full moon, 'cause the schedule got set up quite a long time ago....

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by Rrhain, posted 11-29-2004 3:27 AM Rrhain has not replied

  
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