THE BABYLONIANS. The Babylonians used a lunar calendar of 29- and 30-day months equaling 354 lunar days. To realign the movement of the seasons and stars, they added an occasional month. Every eight years, another three months were added to coordinate with the solar year.
THE EGYPTIANS. The Egyptians designed a solar calendar with twelve 30-day months (360 days in all). The missing extra five days were put at the end of the year as birthdays of the five most important gods.
THE ROMANS. Our present-day calendar goes back to the Romans, 2700 years ago. The first Roman calendar had only ten months -- six months of 30 days, and four months of 31. Someone didn't figure the math on this one first, as the Roman calendar came up 61 1/4 days short of the solar year.
The bad math quickly caught up with the Romans, and holidays and seasons were showing up at the wrong times. So, the second king of Rome, Numa, changed the calendar by adding 51 days to the year. Because he had extra days, he needed two new months and thus introduced January and February.
Numa's calendar of 355 days was ten days too short (one 28-day month, four 31-day ones, and seven 29-day ones). So, for lack of a better idea, the Romans added another month, Mercedinus, after February, when it was needed to balance out the solar year. However, they didn't always remember to do this, and seasons started showing up in the wrong months again.
Julius Caesar, emperor of Rome, decided to fix that.
After consulting his astronomer, Sosigenes, Caesar did some radical calendar surgery. He added three months, giving the year 46 B.C. 445 days. It was a long year (the Romans dubbed it "the year of confusion"), but it started out the next year, 45 B.C., in the right season.
To keep things running smoothly, he put the Julian calendar into effect. This was a solar calendar with 30- and 31-day months, with the added twist of a leap year. This meant that every four years, an additional day was added to February to make up for the extra 1/4-day each year.
Because of this bright idea, the month of Quintilis was changed to July in honor of Julius Caesar.
Caesar's calendar had been the best so far, but it was still not quite right. The solar cycle is only about 365 1/4 days long -- actually, it's 11 minutes and 14 seconds short of that. This doesn't sound like a lot, but after 400 years, the Julian calendar was coming out three days ahead. By the 16th century, the calendar had the spring equinox arriving ten days earlier than usual, and that just wouldn't do for planning the date for Easter.
Pope Gregory XIII was the man who found the answer to the missing minutes, by slightly changing the rule for leap years. He ruled that for the "century" years, only the ones that could be divided evenly by 400 would be leap years.
The Pope had fixed the future calendar (now known as the "Gregorian calendar"}, but he still had to fix his own. What else to do, but drop some extra days?
So, in 1582, October 4 was followed by October 15.
Now our calendar is in pretty good shape. About the only change we have to make these days is buying a new one each year.
The calendar tells you what day school starts on, what day you birthday falls on, and what day you celebrate Thanksgiving. But what if didn't have a calendar? Would you know when these things happened?
Years ago, people didn't. They had to rely on the movements of the Sun and the Moon to tell them when certain days were. So having a calendar seemed like a good idea. The trouble was, no one could decide how it should be set up. How many days should be in a year, or a month?
The lunar cycle is 29 1/2 days along. The solar cycle is 365 1/4 days long. The problem was that twelve lunar months (354 days) don't add up to a solar year. It's eleven and a quarter days short. But adding another lunar month makes the solar year eighteen and a half days too long. People wanted to use the Moon and the Sun as their guide, but they didn't know just how to make it work.
Calendar confusion was the result. Let's look at the ways different people have tried to calculate their calendars, and how we ended up with the system we use today.
The Romans also decided to make March, with 31 days, the first month of the year. There were no January and February yet, and July (the fifth month) and August (the sixth) had different names. July was Quintilis and August was Sextilis, after the Latin names for five and six. September, October, November, and December come from the Latin numbers Septem (7), October (8), novem (9), and decem (10).
January was named after the Roman god Janus, the god of gates. He had a head with two faces, for looking forward and backward from the new year to the old and vice versa. This was a clever idea on Numa's part, but January didn't become the first month until 300 years after his death. In the meantime, it was used for the eleventh month. February was named for the Roman god Februus, and started out as the twelfth month before it became the second.
The century 1700, 1800, 1900 were not leap years, but the year 2000 will be, as will the year 2400.
Not everyone uses the Gregorian calendar, usually because of religious reasons. Check out these calendars.
* The Hebrew calendar uses a 19-year lunisolar pattern consisting of 12 years with 12 months, and 7 years with 13 months. In a 13-month year (every three years), the sixth month is repeated. According to tradition, the Hebrew calendar date is 3,760 years and three months ahead of ours.
* The Islamic calendar uses a 12-month lunar cycle, with a 30-year pattern of nineteen 354-day years and eleven 355-day leap years. This pattern moves backward through the seasons, bringing the Islamic holidays full circle every 32 1/2 years.
* The Chinese calendar is lunar-based. It designates years in cycles of 60. The years in each cycle are given names after animals: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep (goat), monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. (Our year 2000, the year of the dragon, will be the 17th year in the 78th cycle.)
It was another 170 years before England and the American colonies made the move to the Gregorian calendar. By then, they had 11 days to drop. Russia didn't adopt it until 1918! They had to skip thirteen days.
Different calendars have been proposed over the years. Would you choose any of these?
* World Calendar: 12-month, 52-week, 364-day year. Starts on Sunday, January 1. The 365th day would be called Year-End Day -- it would have no date or day of the week. Leap-year days would have no day or date either, and would fall between the last day of June and first day of July. Months would have 31 and 30 days.
* International Fixed Calendar or Thirteen-Month Calendar. A year would be divided into 13 months of 28 days each, with the 365th day called a Year Day, with no date. In leap years, an extra day would be added after June 28. All Sundays would fall on the 1st, 8th, 15th, or 22nd of each month. The extra month would be called Sol, and put between June and July.
* Perpetual Calendar: similar to the World Calendar, but weeks would start on Monday.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Everyone talks about the year 2000 being the beginning of the new millennium. Not so. The new millennium doesn't start until January 1, 2001 (a Monday, by the way).
Why is this? Because "0" was not used at the time our dating system was created.
The first year began with A.D. 1. Therefore, the first century had to run from A.D. 1 to A.D. 101 to make 100 years.
The same is true of the millennium. It runs from A.D. 1001 to A.D. 2001. Remember, "to" means up to, but not including.
No one has really thought of a good nickname yet for the first decade of the 21st century. Some suggest calling it the "double 0s"; others say "the zeros." What do you think is a good name? Send your suggestion to ODYSSEY -- we'll print some in a future issue.
Kelly Musselman is a writer in Fredericksburg, Texas. She plans to wait a year before celebrating the millennium.
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