Yuri Ruban,
cand. East. sciences, cand. theology
Etymology of the term
The word " the calendar"took on different meanings in its history. The term itself dates back to the Latin calendae, calendars are the name of the first day of each month in Ancient rome. In turn, this noun comes from the archaic verb cal (e) o - “proclaim”, “convene”, because once in Rome the beginning of the month was proclaimed by learned priests. Then came the word calendarium - the so-called debt book, in which creditors recorded the interest paid on debts on the first day of each month. And even later, in the Middle Ages, modern significance appeared. Thus, a calendar (calendarium) is a certain system of counting long periods with subdivisions into separate shorter periods (years, months, weeks, days).
A characteristic feature of the Christian calendar is that it combines the principles of two calendars - Jewish lunar-solar and Roman solar. The first corresponds to the holidays of the mobile cycle; moreover, even the names of the two most important Jewish holidays are preserved - Passover (in Greek transcription Easter) and Pentecost. The second calendar corresponds to the holidays of the fixed cycle; moreover, the main one - Christmas of Christ - was combined by the Church with the winter solstice (December 25) - the day of an important pagan solar festival - the Birthday of the Invincible Sun, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. The Roman solar calendar has been reformed twice: first radically by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. e. (therefore called Julian), and then, in order to make it more accurate, by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 (this is our Gregorian calendar).
The need for a calendar
The need to measure time arose in people a very long time. It is simply impossible to live without a counting system, whether it is a measurement of space (metrology) or time (calendar and chronology). The higher the level of culture and science, the more perfect the systems of counting or measurement become.
Nature - or the Lord God, as you like best - has provided people with three periodic (observed even with the naked eye of a primitive man) processes that allow you to keep track of time:
1) the change of day and night,
2) the change of phases of the moon and
3) change of seasons.
On their basis such concepts as day, month and year have developed. It is perfectly clear that the number of days in a calendar month and in a calendar year can only be an integer. Meanwhile, their astronomical prototypes — the synodic month and the tropical year — contain fractional parts of the day.
The synodic month (from the Greek "rapprochement"; during the new moons, the Moon, as it were, converges with the Sun) is the time interval between two new moons; it ranges from 29.25 to 29.83 days (the reason is the ellipticity of the lunar orbit). The average duration of the synodic month is 29.53059 days (\u003d 29 days, 12 hours 44 minutes 3.0 seconds).
A tropical year (from Greek - turn) is a period of time after which the height of the Sun above the horizon at noon, having reached its greatest value, decreases again. In other words, this is the period of time during which the Earth makes one revolution around the Sun. T \u003d 365.24220 days.
Thus, neither the synodic month nor the tropical year contain an integer number of average sunny days; therefore, all three of these quantities are incommensurable. This means that it is impossible to simply express one of these quantities through the other, that is, it is impossible to select a certain integer number of solar years, which would contain an integer number of lunar months and an integer number of average sunny days. It is in this - the whole complexity of the calendar system and all the confusion that reigned for many millennia in the matter of reckoning large periods of time.
It is not surprising that the creation and improvement of calendar systems was previously available only to priests - the intellectuals of antiquity, who determined the dates of the holidays, which were both church and civil, and according to which ordinary people checked the time. It is enough to recall that the calendar according to which Europe lived 1600 years (and the Russian Orthodox Church still lives) was introduced by the pagan priest of Rome (Julius Caesar); the reform of this (Julian) calendar was carried out in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII (the supreme Christian "priest"), and the chronology of which the whole of humanity now compares time (the era from the Nativity of Christ, or Anno Domini, abbreviated AD) was developed and introduced in 525 Roman archivist Abbot Dionysius the Small.
Three kinds of calendars
The desire to at least to some extent coordinate among themselves the day, month and year led to the emergence of three calendar systems:
1) a solar calendar based on the movement of the Sun, in which they sought to coordinate day and year;
2) a lunar calendar based on the movement of the moon, the purpose of which is to coordinate the day and lunar month; finally,
3) lunar-solar, in which an attempt is made to coordinate among themselves all three units of time.
Lunar-solar calendar systems are much more complex than lunar and solar calendars. Here it is necessary that the beginning of the calendar months be as close as possible to the new moon, and the sum of a certain number of whole lunar months should more accurately correspond to the true duration of the tropical year. Calendar months have twenty nine or thirty days. The basis of almost all existing lunar-solar calendars is the so-called Meton cycle, named after the ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician Meton, who established this nineteen-year cycle in 432 BC. e. It serves to best coordinate the changes in the lunar phases with the movement of the sun. In this cycle, 12 years of 12 lunar months and 7 years of 13 months. False months have received the name "embolismic" (from Greek. - insert). A year with 13 months is a leap year; ancient Jews called him ibbur - "pregnant." They are located as follows: 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19.
The Jewish lunar-solar calendar is the basis of Christian Passover (a system of rules and amendments to calculate the date of the celebration of Easter for each year). Easter-dependent holidays and penance days (this is the Easter cycle) are recorded in our calendar, which is called moving (because its days move every year on the month), or triode, because the service book contains the Greek name Triodi for all these days. .
A triode is a service containing services with variable prayers for worship services of the mobile (Easter) cycle, starting with the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee and ending with the Week of All Saints. Name Triode, Greek. Triodion, letters. "Trident" comes from the presence in it of a large number of so-called. "Incomplete" canons, consisting of three songs. Currently, the Russian tradition is divided into two books:
1) The Lenten Triode (from the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee to Great Saturday inclusive), and
2) Color Triode (starting from the Easter week and ending with the All Saints Week).
Bible calendar
| Months count | Ancient and Assyro-Babylonian names of the months, the number of days in a month and special days of the month | Modern calendar | |
|---|---|---|---|
| holy | citizen | ||
| I | 7 | AVIVNISAN. 30 days 14. Easter (; Lev. 23: 5;). 16. Bringing the first sheaf of barley harvest (Lev. 23: 10-14). |
march, April |
| II | 8 | ZIF, INR. 29 days 14. Second Easter - for those who could not complete the first (). |
april May |
| III | 9 | SIVAN. 30 days 6. Pentecost (Lev. 23:16) or the feast of the weeks (). Bringing the firstfruits of the harvest of wheat (Lev. 23: 15-21) and the firstfruits of all the fruits of the earth (;). |
may June |
| IV | 10 | FAMMUZ. 29 days 17. fast. The capture of Jerusalem (). |
june July |
| V | 11 | AB. 30 days 9. Fast. The destruction of the temple of Jerusalem (). |
july August |
| VI | 12 | ELUL. 29 days | aug. Sept |
| VII | 1 | AFANIMTISHRI. 30 days 1. Pipe festival (). New Year. 10. Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29, 25: 9). 15-22. Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23: 34-36;). |
september October |
| VIII | 2 | BULMARCHESHWAN. 29 days | october November |
| IX | 3 | KISLEV. 30 days Feast of renewal (.). |
november December |
| X | 4 | TEFEF. 30 days | december - January |
| Xi | 5 | SHEVAT. 30 days | january February |
| XII | 6 | ADAR. 29 days 11. Esther's Post (). 14-15. Purim holiday (). |
february March |
In the Bible, the holy year since the exodus from Egypt begins in spring, from the month of Aviv, which means the month of a mature ear of wheat (). It was the month of the vernal equinox and the time of barley ripening (Lev. 23: 10-14). Later it became known as Nisan. On the 14th day of this month, which falls on the full moon, Easter was celebrated (). Other months did not have names, they were talked about: second month, tenth month, etc. Only in the story about the construction of the temple of Solomon with the participation of the Phoenicians were three months specifically mentioned: zyph (flowering month) -, afanim (month of stormy winds) -, and bul (month of growth) -; these are Phoenician names. After the captivity of Babylon, the Assyrian-Babylonian names of the months appeared: Nisan (Num. 10 : 10, 28:11). 29.5 days pass from one new moon to another, so the months lasted 29 and 30 days alternately. 12 lunar months make up 354 days a year, which is 11 days less than a solar year. For three years, the difference between the lunar and solar years will be a whole month, so about once every three years, the 13th month was added to make a year lasting 384 days. This was done so that Aviv remained the spring month.
The attached table shows the names of the months in the holy and civil year (i.e., the first month, second, etc.), as well as the ancient (Canaanite and Phoenician) and aftermath (Assyrian-Babylonian names in the form in which they are given in the Russian Bible, the number of days in a month is indicated, Bible holidays and fasts are listed, and approximate correspondence of the Bible months to modern ones is shown.
The days of the week, except Saturday (Shabbat), did not have special names, except for the Greek name that existed in the Hellenistic era for the day before Saturday - Paraskevi, which means "cooking" (for rest day - Saturday). The week ended on Saturday, so the "first day" (after Saturday, see) corresponds to our Sunday, the "second day" to Monday, etc.
The day (in the sense of the day) began with the sunset, i.e. from late evening. In antiquity, both night and day were divided into three parts: night on the first, second and third guards (), and day - on the morning, noon and evening (see). Later, from the time of Roman rule, the night was divided into four guards (;) and the concept of “hour” came into use - the twelfth of a day or night (;).
“Decree on the introduction of the Russian Republic western european calendar»
Decree on the introduction of the West European calendar in the Russian Republic dated January 26, 1918 - the regulatory legal act adopted by the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) of Russia on the transition of Soviet Russia to the Gregorian calendar.
Background
In Russia, at the beginning of the 20th century, the old Julian calendar was used as a civil one. First of all, this was due to the fact that Orthodoxy at that time was the state religion in the Russian Empire, and the Orthodox Church negatively related to the Gregorian calendar, adopted at that time in most countries. The difference in calendars created inconvenience in relations with Europe, therefore this decree was issued “In order to establish in Russia the same calculation of time with almost all cultural peoples”. On the eve of January 23 (February 5), by special decree, the church was separated from the state, and the linking of the civil calendar to the church lost its relevance.
For the first time, the question of calendar reform was raised already at one of the first meetings of the Council of People's Commissars on November 16 (29), 1917. At a meeting on January 23 (February 5), 1918, two projects were proposed and a commission was formed to consider them. One of the projects provided for a gradual transition to the Gregorian calendar, that is, it was supposed to drop 24 hours each year. Since by that time the difference between the calendars was already 13 days, a complete transition to a new style would take 13 years. The advantage of this option was that the Orthodox Church could use it. The second option was tougher and provided for an instantaneous transition to a new style. The interests of the church were not taken into account. The supporter of this option was Lenin.
Adoption
The decree on the introduction of the West European calendar in the Russian Republic was adopted at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars on January 24 (February 6), 1918, and January 26 (February 8), 1918, was signed by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. I. Lenin.
Dates corresponding to the old calendar came to be called the "old style", and the new one - the "new style."
The Russian Orthodox Church did not begin to switch to a new style and still uses the Julian calendar, but some Orthodox churches, in particular renovationists, have changed the calendar.
Decree text
In order to establish in Russia the same calculation of time with almost all cultural peoples, the Council of People's Commissars decides to introduce a new calendar into civilian life after January of this year. By virtue of this:
1) The first day after January 31 of this year should not be considered February 1, but February 14, the second day should be considered the 15th, etc.
2) The terms of all obligations, both under the contract and according to the law, which would have occurred, according to the current calendar, between February 1 and 14, shall be deemed to have occurred between February 14 and 27, by adding 13 days to each respective period.
3) The dates of all obligations that would have occurred, according to the calendar so far in force, between February 14 and July 1, p. g., at the request of both parties shall be deemed to have arrived 13 days later.
4) The dates of all obligations that would have occurred, according to the current calendar, starting from July 1, p. g., considered to have arrived on the same dates and according to the new calendar being introduced.
5) When calculating the period of interest on all state and private loans, on all dividend securities, on deposits and on current accounts in the first after February 14 according to the new calendar, the period of time elapsed after the last interest calculation is less than 13 days.
6) To persons receiving a salary or wages at the end of each month, issue February 28, p. d. the monthly amount received minus 13/30 thereof.
7) For persons receiving a salary or wages of 15 and 30 of each month, do not pay on February 15, but issue it on February 28 with. d. the received monthly amount minus 13/30 thereof.
8) To persons receiving a salary or wage 20 of each month, issue February 20 with. d. the monthly amount received minus 13/30 thereof.
THE CALENDAR
(from lat. calendae or kalendae, "calends" is the name of the first day of the month among the ancient Romans), a way of dividing the year into convenient periodic time intervals. The main tasks of the calendar are: a) fixing dates and b) measuring time intervals. For example, task (a) includes the registration of dates of natural phenomena, both periodic — the equinoxes, eclipses, tides — and non-periodic, such as earthquakes. The calendar allows you to register historical and social events in their chronological sequence. One of the important tasks of the calendar is to determine the moments of church events and “drifting” holidays (for example, Easter). Calendar function (b) is used in the public sphere and at home, where interest payments, salaries and other business relationships are based on specific time intervals. Many statistical and scientific studies also use time intervals. There are three main types of calendars: 1) lunar, 2) solar, and 3) lunar-solar. The lunar calendar is based on the duration of the synodic or lunar month (29.53059 days), determined by the period of the change of lunar phases; however, the duration of the solar year is not taken into account. An example of a lunar calendar is the Muslim calendar. Most peoples using the lunar calendar consider months to be alternately consisting of 29 or 30 days, so the average month length is 29.5 days. The length of the lunar year in such a calendar is 12ґ29.5 \u003d 354 days. The true lunar year, consisting of 12 synodic months, contains 354.3671 days. The calendar does not account for this fractional part; Thus, in 30 years, a discrepancy of 11.012 days is gained. Adding these 11 days every 30 years restores the calendar to the lunar phases. The main disadvantage of the lunar calendar is that its year is 11 days shorter than the solar year; therefore, the beginning of certain seasons on the lunar calendar falls from year to year on ever later dates, which causes certain difficulties in public life. The solar calendar is consistent with the duration of the solar year; in it, the beginning and duration of calendar months are not associated with a change in the lunar phases. The ancient Egyptians and Mayans had solar calendars; Nowadays, most countries also use the solar calendar. The true solar year contains 365.2422 days; but the civil calendar, to be convenient, must contain an integer number of days, therefore, in the solar calendar a normal year contains 365 days, and the fractional part of the day (0.2422) is taken into account every few years by adding one day to the so-called leap year. The solar calendar usually focuses on four main dates - two equinoxes and two solstices. The accuracy of the calendar is determined by how accurately the equinox falls on the same day of each year. The lunar-solar calendar is an attempt to agree on the duration of the lunar month and the solar (tropical) year by periodic adjustments. So that the average number of days in a year according to the lunar calendar corresponds to the solar year, the thirteenth lunar month is added every 2 or 3 years. This trick is required so that the agricultural seasons fall on the same dates every year. An example of a lunar-solar calendar is the Hebrew calendar, officially adopted in Israel.
TIME MEASUREMENT
Calendars use time units based on periodic motions of astronomical objects. The rotation of the Earth around its axis determines the duration of the day, the revolution of the Moon around the Earth gives the duration of the lunar month, and the revolution of the Earth around the Sun sets the solar year.
Sunny day. The apparent movement of the Sun across the sky sets the true sunny day as the interval between two successive passage of the Sun through the meridian at the lower climax. If this movement reflected only the rotation of the Earth around its axis, then it would occur very uniformly. But it is also associated with the uneven movement of the Earth around the Sun and with the inclination of the earth's axis; therefore, true sunny days are variable. To measure time in everyday life and in science, the mathematically calculated position of the "average sun" and, accordingly, the average solar day, which have a constant duration, are used. In most countries, the start of the day is at 0 h, i.e. at midnight. But this was not always so: in biblical times, in ancient Greece and Judea, as well as in some other eras, the beginning of the day was in the evening. The Romans at different periods of their history, the day began at different times of the day.
Moon month. Initially, the duration of the month was determined by the period of the moon's revolution around the Earth, more precisely, by the synodic lunar period, equal to the time interval between two successive offensives of the same phases of the moon, for example, new moons or full moons. The average synodic lunar month (the so-called "lunation") lasts 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 2.8 seconds. In biblical times, lunation was considered equal to 30 days, but the Romans, Greeks, and some other peoples accepted the standard measured by astronomers as 29.5 days. The lunar month is a convenient unit of time in public life, since it is longer than a day, but shorter than a year. In antiquity, the Moon attracted universal interest as a tool for measuring time, because it is very easy to observe the expressive change in its phases. In addition, the lunar month was associated with various religious needs and therefore played an important role in the preparation of the calendar.
Year.In everyday life, including when compiling a calendar, the word "year" means a tropical year ("year of seasons"), equal to the time interval between two successive passage of the Sun through the vernal equinox. Now its duration is 365 days 5 h 48 min 45.6 s, and every 100 years it decreases by 0.5 s. Even ancient civilizations used this seasonal year; according to the records of the Egyptians, Chinese and other ancient peoples, it can be seen that the length of the year was initially assumed to be 360 \u200b\u200bdays. But for quite some time the length of the tropical year was specified up to 365 days. Later, the Egyptians accepted its duration equal to 365.25 days, and the great astronomer of antiquity Hipparchus reduced this quarter of the day by several minutes. The civil year did not always begin on January 1. Many ancient peoples (like some modern ones) began the year from the moment of the vernal equinox, and in Ancient Egypt the year began on the day of the vernal equinox.
HISTORY OF CALENDARS
Greek calendar. In the ancient Greek calendar, a typical year consisted of 354 days. But since he lacked 11.25 days to reconcile with the solar year, then every 8 years 90 days were added to the year (11.25 * 8), divided into three identical months; this 8-year cycle was called octaheteride. After about 432 BC the Greek calendar was based on the Meton cycle, and then on the Callippus cycle (see the section on cycles and eras below).
Roman calendar. According to ancient historians, at the beginning (c. 8th century BC), the Latin calendar consisted of 10 months and contained 304 days: five months, 31 days each, four months 30 and one month from 29 days. The year began on March 1; hence the names of some months - September ("seventh"), October ("eighth"), November ("ninth") and December ("tenth"). New days began at midnight. Subsequently, the Roman calendar underwent considerable changes. Before 700 BC Emperor Numa Pompilius added two months - January and February. The Numa calendar contained 7 months of 29 days, 4 months of 31 days and February from 28 days, which amounted to 355 days. Around 451 BC a group of 10 senior Roman officials (Decemvirs) brought the sequence of months to their current form, moving the beginning of the year from March 1 to January 1. Later, a college of pontiffs was established, which carried out a reform of the calendar.
Julian calendar. By 46 BC, when Julius Caesar became supreme pontiff, calendar dates clearly differed from natural seasonal phenomena. There were so many complaints that a radical reform was needed. To restore the calendar’s previous relationship with the seasons, Caesar, on the advice of the Alexandrian astronomer Sozigen, extended the 46th year BC by adding a month of 23 days after February and two months of 34 and 33 days between November and December. Thus, that year was 445 days and he was nicknamed "the year of confusion." Then Caesar fixed the duration of the usual year at 365 days with the introduction of once every four years one additional day after February 24. This made it possible to bring the average duration of the year (365.25 days) closer to the duration of the tropical year. Caesar deliberately abandoned the lunar year and chose a sunny year, since at the same time all inserts, except for a leap year, became unnecessary. Thus Caesar established the duration of the year exactly 365 days and 6 hours; since then it is precisely this value that is commonly used: after three ordinary years, one leap year follows. Caesar changed the duration of the months (Table 1), putting February from 29 days in a regular year and leaping from 30. This Julian calendar, now often called the "old style", was introduced on January 1, 45 BC. Then the month of quintiles was renamed in July in honor of Julius Caesar, and the spring equinox was shifted to its original date on March 25.
Augustian calendar. After Caesar’s death, the pontiffs, apparently having misunderstood the instructions on leap years, added a leap year over 36 years not once every four, but once every three years. Emperor Augustus corrected this mistake by missing three leap years from 8 BC until 8 A.D. Starting from this moment, only years with a number multiple of 4 were considered leap years. In honor of the emperor, the month of sextile was renamed August. In addition, the number of days this month was increased from 30 to 31. These days were taken from February. September and November were reduced from 31 to 30 days, and October and December were increased from 30 to 31 days, which kept the total number of days on the calendar (Table 1). Thus, a modern system of months has developed. Some authors consider not Augustus, but still Julius Caesar, the founder of the modern calendar.
Calends, ides and non. The Romans used these words only in the plural, calling them the special days of the months. Calendars, as mentioned above, were called the first day of each month. Ides were the 15th day of March, May, July (quintilis), October, and the 13th day of the remaining (short) months. In modern calculations, non is called the 8th day before the ides. But the Romans took into account the ides themselves, so they had nona on the 9th day (hence their name "nonus", nine). March Ides was March 15, or, less specifically, any of the seven previous days: from March 8 to March 15, inclusive. The nons of March, May, July, and October were on the 7th day of the month, and on the other, short months, on the 5th day. The days of the month were counted back: in the first half of the month they said that so many days were left until non or id, and in the second half - until the calendars of the next month.
Gregorian calendar.The Julian year is 365 days 6 hours longer than the true solar one for 11 minutes 14 seconds, therefore, over time, the onset of seasonal events on the Julian calendar occurred on all earlier dates. Particularly strong discontent was caused by the constant shift in the date of Easter, associated with the spring equinox. In 325 AD Nicene Council issued a decree on a single Easter date for the entire Christian church. In the following centuries, many suggestions were made to improve the calendar. Finally, the proposals of the Neapolitan astronomer and physician Aloysius Lilia (Luigi Lilio Giraldi) and the Bavarian Jesuit Christopher Clavius \u200b\u200bwere approved by Pope Gregory XIII. He published a bull on February 24, 1582, introducing two important additions to the Julian calendar: 10 days were withdrawn from the 1582 calendar - followed on October 15 after October 4. This made it possible to preserve March 21 as the date of the vernal equinox, which it was probably in 325 AD In addition, three out of every four centuries of age should be considered ordinary, and only those that are divisible by 400 should be considered leap years. Thus, 1582 was the first year of the Gregorian calendar, often called the "new style." France switched to a new style the same year. Some other Catholic countries adopted it in 1583. Other countries switched to a new style in different years: for example, Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar from 1752; by 1700 a leap year according to the Julian calendar, the difference between it and the Gregorian calendar was already 11 days, so in the UK after September 2, 1752, September 14 came. In the same year in England, the beginning of the year was postponed to January 1 (before new Year It began on the day of the Annunciation - March 25). A retrospective correction of dates caused great confusion for many years, since Pope Gregory XIII ordered amendments to all past dates, right up to the Council of Nicaea. The Gregorian calendar is used today in many countries, including the USA and Russia, which abandoned the Eastern (Julian) calendar only after the October (in fact, November) Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The Gregorian calendar is not absolutely accurate: it is 26 years longer than the tropical year. The difference reaches one day in 3323 years. To compensate for them, instead of excluding three leap years from every 400, one leap year should be excluded from every 128 years; this would correct the calendar so much that in only 100,000 years the difference between the calendar and tropical years would reach 1 day.
Jewish calendar. This typical lunar-solar calendar has a very ancient origin. Its months contain alternately 29 and 30 days, and once every 3 years add the 13th month of Veadar; it is inserted before the month of Nisan every 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th year of the 19-year cycle. Nisan is the first month of the Jewish calendar, although years are counted from the seventh month of Tishri. The insertion of Weadar leads to the fact that the vernal equinox always falls on the moon in the month of Nisan. In the Gregorian calendar, there are two kinds of years - the ordinary and leap years, and in the Jewish calendar, the usual (12-month) year and the embolismic (13-month) year. In the embolismic year, of the 30 days inserted before Nisan, 1 day belongs to the sixth month of Adar (which usually contains 29 days), and Veadar is 29 days. In fact, the Jewish lunar-solar calendar is even more complicated than described here. Although it is suitable for calculating time, but because of the use of the lunar month it cannot be considered an effective modern tool of this kind.
Muslim calendar. Before Muhammad, who died in 632, the Arabs had a lunar-solar calendar with fake months, similar to the Jewish one. It is believed that the mistakes of the old calendar forced Muhammad to abandon the extra months and introduce the lunar calendar, the first year of which was 622. It takes the day and synodic lunar month as the unit of reference, and the seasons are not taken into account at all. The lunar month is considered equal to 29.5 days, and the year consists of 12 months, containing alternately 29 or 30 days. In the 30-year cycle, the last month of the year for 19 years contains 29 days, and the remaining 11 years - 30 days. The average length of the year in such a calendar is 354.37 days. The Muslim calendar is widely distributed in the Near and Middle East, although Turkey in 1925 abandoned it in favor of the Gregorian calendar.
Egyptian calendar. The early Egyptian calendar was lunar, as evidenced by the hieroglyph "month" in the form of a lunar sickle. Later, the life of the Egyptians was closely connected with the annual floods of the Nile, which became their point of reference for time, stimulating the creation of a solar calendar. According to J. Brested, this calendar was introduced in 4236 BC, and this date is considered the oldest historical date. The sunny year in Egypt contained 12 months of 30 days, and at the end of the last month another five additional days passed (epagenes), which in total yielded 365 days. Since the calendar year was 1/4 day shorter than the sun, over time it diverged more and more with the seasons. Observing the heliacal rising of Sirius (the first appearance of a star in the rays of the morning dawn after its invisibility during the conjunction with the Sun), the Egyptians determined that 1461 Egyptian years for 365 days are equal to 1460 solar years for 365.25 days. This interval is known as the Sotis period. For a long time, the priests prevented any change in the calendar. Finally in 238 BC Ptolemy III decreed to add one day to every fourth year, i.e. introduced the semblance of a leap year. Thus was born the modern solar calendar. The day of the Egyptians began with the rising of the sun, their week consisted of 10 days, and the month of three weeks.
Chinese calendar. The prehistoric Chinese calendar was lunar. Around 2357 BC Emperor Yao, dissatisfied with the existing lunar calendar, ordered his astronomers to determine the dates of the equinoxes and use the insertion months to create a seasonal calendar convenient for agriculture. To align the 354-day lunar calendar with the 365-day astronomical year, 7 insert months were added every 19 years, following the detailed instructions. Although the solar and lunar years were generally consistent, lunar-solar differences remained; they were corrected when they reached a noticeable value. Nevertheless, the calendar was still imperfect: the years had unequal duration, and the equinoxes fell on different dates. In the Chinese calendar, the year consisted of 24 crescents. The Chinese calendar has a 60-year cycle, the beginning of which is considered to be 2637 BC. (according to other sources - 2397 BC) with several internal periods, and each year has a rather funny name, for example, “year of the cow” in 1997, “year of the tiger” in 1998, “hare” in 1999, “dragon” in 2000, etc., which are repeated with a period of 12 years. After the western invasion of China in the 19th century. the Gregorian calendar began to be used in commerce, and in 1911 it was officially adopted in the new Republic of China. However, peasants still continued to use the ancient lunar calendar, but since 1930 it has been banned.
Mayan and Aztec calendars. The ancient Mayan civilization possessed a very high skill in counting time. Their calendar contained 365 days and consisted of 18 months of 20 days (each month and each day had their own name) plus 5 additional days that were not related to any month. The calendar consisted of 28 weeks with 13 numbered days in each, which was only 364 days; one day remained redundant. Almost the same calendar was used by the Maya neighbors - the Aztecs. Of great interest is the Aztec calendar stone. The face in the center represents the Sun. Four large rectangles adjoining it depict heads symbolizing the dates of four previous world eras. The heads and symbols in the rectangles of the next circle symbolize 20 days of the month. Large triangular figures depict sunbeams, and at the base of the outer circle two fire snakes represent the heat of heaven. The Aztec calendar is similar to the Mayan calendar, but the names of the months are different.
CYCLES AND ERA
Sunday letters is a diagram showing the relationship between the day of the month and the day of the week for any year. For example, it allows you to define Sundays, and based on this, create a calendar for the whole year. The table of weekly letters can be written as follows:
Each day of the year, except February 29 of leap years, is indicated by a letter. A certain day of the week is always indicated by the same letter throughout the year, with the exception of leap years; therefore, the letter that designates the first Sunday corresponds to all other Sundays of this year. Knowing the Sunday letters of any year (from A to G), you can completely restore the order of the days of the week this year. The following table is useful:
SUNDAY LETTERS FOR ANY YEAR
Meton cycle shows the ratio of the lunar month and the solar year; therefore, it became the basis for the Greek, Jewish and some other calendars. This cycle consists of 19 years of 12 months plus 7 additional months. It is named after the Greek astronomer Meton, who discovered it in 432 BC, not suspecting that they knew about him in China from 2260 BC. Meton determined that the period of 19 solar years contains 235 synodic months (lunations). He considered the length of the year to be 365.25 days, so 19 years he had 6939 days 18 hours, and 235 lunations equal 6939 days 16 hours 31 minutes. He inserted 7 additional months in this cycle, since 19 years for 12 months give a total of 228 months. Meton is believed to have inserted extra months in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th and 19th years of the cycle. All years, in addition to the indicated ones, contain 12 months each, consisting alternately of 29 or 30 days, 6 years among the above seven contain an additional month of 30 days, and the seventh - 29 days. Probably the first Meton cycle began in July 432 BC. The phases of the moon are repeated on the same days of the cycle with an accuracy of several hours. Thus, if the dates of new moons are determined during one cycle, then they are easily determined for subsequent cycles. The position of each year in the Meton cycle indicates its number, which takes values \u200b\u200bfrom 1 to 19 and is called the golden number (since in the ancient era the phases of the moon were inscribed in gold on public monuments). You can determine the golden number of the year by special tables; it is used to calculate the date of Easter.
Callippus cycle. Another Greek astronomer, Callippus, was in 330 BC. developed Meton's idea by introducing a 76-year cycle (\u003d 19ґ4). Callippus cycles contain a constant number of leap years, while in the Meton cycle their number is variable.
Solar cycle. This cycle consists of 28 years and helps to establish a connection between the day of the week and the ordinal day of the month. If there were no leap years, then the correspondence of the days of the week and the dates of the month would be regularly repeated with a 7-year cycle, since there are 7 days in a week, and the year can begin with any of them; and also because a typical year is 1 day longer than 52 full weeks. But the introduction of leap years every 4 years makes the cycle of repeating all possible calendars in the same order 28-year-old. The interval between years with the same calendar varies from 6 to 28 years.
The cycle of Dionysius (Easter). This cycle of 532 years has components of the lunar 19-year and 28-year solar cycles. It is believed that it was introduced by Dionysius the Small in 532. According to his calculations, just in that year the lunar cycle began, the first in the new Easter cycle, which indicated the date of Christ's birth in 1 AD (This date is often the subject of controversy; some authors call the date of Christ's birth 4 BC). The Dionysius cycle contains a complete sequence of Easter dates.
Epact. The episode is the age of the moon from the new moon in days on January 1 of any year. The fact was proposed by A. Lilius and introduced by K. Clavius \u200b\u200bduring the preparation of new tables for determining Easter days and other holidays. Each year has its own fact. In general, to determine the date of Easter, a lunar calendar is required, but the fact allows you to determine the date of the new moon and then calculate the date of the first full moon after the spring equinox. The next Sunday after this date is Easter. The fact is more perfect than the golden number: it allows you to determine the dates of new moons and full moons by the age of the moon on January 1, without calculating the lunar phases for the whole year. The full table of facts is calculated for 7000 years, after which the entire series is repeated. Epacts run through a series of 19 numbers cyclically. To determine the episode of the current year, you need to add 11. If the amount exceeds 30, then you need to subtract 30. This is not a very accurate rule: the number 30 is approximate, so the dates of astronomical phenomena calculated by this rule can differ from the true ones by a day. Prior to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, the facts were not used. It is believed that the cycle of episodes began in 1 BC. with fact 11. The instructions for calculating the facts seem very complicated until you get into the details.
Roman indicators. This is a cycle introduced by the last Roman emperor Constantine; they used it for conducting business and collecting taxes. A continuous sequence of years was divided into 15-year intervals - indicators. The cycle began on January 1, 313. Consequently, 1 AD was the fourth year of the indicator. The rule for determining the year number in the current indicator is: add 3 to the Gregorian year number and divide this number by 15, the remainder is the desired number. So, in the system of Roman indicators, the year 2000 is number 8.
Julian period. This is a universal period used in astronomy and chronology; introduced by the French historian J. Scaliger in 1583. "Julian" Scaliger named it after his father, the famous scientist Julius Caesar Scaliger. The Julian period contains 7980 years - the product of the solar cycle (28 years, after which the Julian calendar dates fall on the same days of the week), Meton cycle (19 years, after which all phases of the moon fall on the same days of the year) and the Roman cycle (15 years). The beginning of the Julian period, Scaliger chose January 1, 4713 BC according to the Julian calendar continued into the past, since all three of the above cycles converge on this date (more precisely, January 0.5, since the average Greenwich midday was taken as the beginning of the Julian day; therefore, by midnight, which begins on January 1, 0.5 already passes Julian days). The current Julian period will end at the end of 3267 AD. (January 23, 3268 according to the Gregorian calendar). In order to determine the year number in the Julian period, you need to add the number 4713 to it; the amount will be the desired number. For example, 1998 was numbered 6711 in the Julian period. Each day of this period has its own Julian number JD (Julian Day), equal to the number of days that have passed from the beginning of the period to noon on this day. So, on January 1, 1993 it had the number JD 2 448 989, i.e. by Greenwich noon of this date, exactly so many full days have passed from the beginning of the period. Date January 1, 2000 is numbered JD 2,451,545. The Julian number for each calendar date is given in astronomical yearbooks. The difference between the Julian numbers of the two dates indicates the number of days elapsed between them, which is very important to know in astronomical calculations.
Roman era. The years of this era were counted from the moment of the foundation of Rome, which is considered to be 753 BC. The year number was preceded by the abbreviation A.U.C. (anno urbis conditae - year of foundation of the city). For example, the year 2000 of the Gregorian calendar corresponds to the year 2753 of the Roman era.
Olympic era. Olympics are 4-year intervals between Greek sports held at Olympia; they were used in the chronology of ancient Greece. The Olympic Games were held on the days of the first full moon after the summer solstice, in the month of the hecatombeyon, which corresponds to modern July. Calculations show that the first Olympic Games were held on July 17, 776 BC. At that time, a lunar calendar was used with additional months of the Meton cycle. In the 4th century of the Christian era, Emperor Theodosius canceled the Olympics, and in the 392 Olympics were replaced by Roman indicators. The term "Olympic era" is often found in chronology.
The era of Nabonassara. Introduced one of the first and named after the Babylonian king Nabonassar. The era of Nabonassara is of particular interest to astronomers, as it was used to indicate dates by Hipparchus and the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy in his Almagest. Apparently, in Babylon, detailed astronomical research began in this era. The era begins on February 26, 747 BC. (according to the Julian calendar), the first year of the reign of Nabonassar. Ptolemy began the count of the day from midday on the meridian of Alexandria, and he had an Egyptian year, containing exactly 365 days. It is not known whether the era of Nabonassar was used in Babylon in the era of its formal beginning, but in later times, it was apparently used. Bearing in mind the “Egyptian” length of the year, it is easy to calculate that the year 2000 according to the Gregorian calendar is the year 2749 of the era of Nabonassar.
Jewish era. The beginning of the Jewish era is the mythical date of the creation of the world, 3761 BC. The Jewish civil year begins around the autumn equinox. For example, September 11, 1999 according to the Gregorian calendar was the first day of 5760 according to the Jewish calendar.
The Muslim era, or Hijra era, begins on July 16, 622, i.e. from the date of Muhammad’s relocation from Mecca to Medina. For example, on April 6, 2000, according to the Gregorian calendar, the year 1421 of the Muslim calendar begins.
Christian era. It began on January 1, A.D. It is believed that the Christian era was introduced by Dionysius the Small in 532; time flows in it in accordance with the cycle of Dionysius described above. Dionysius took the beginning of the 1st year of “our” (or “new”) era on March 25, so the day was December 25, 1st AD (i.e. 9 months later) was called the birthday of Christ. Pope Gregory XIII rescheduled the beginning of the year to January 1. But historians and chronologists have long considered the day of the Nativity of Christ December 25, 1 BC There was much debate about this crucial date, and only modern studies have shown that Christmas is most likely to occur on December 25, 4 BC. The confusion in the establishment of such dates is caused by the fact that astronomers often call the year of Christ's birth zero year (0 A.D.), which was preceded by 1 B.C. But other astronomers, as well as historians and chronologists, believe that there was no zero year and immediately after 1 BC. follows 1 AD There is no agreement on whether to consider such years as 1800 and 1900 the end of a century or the beginning of the next. If we accept the existence of the zero year, then 1900 will be the beginning of a century, and 2000 will also be the beginning of a new millennium. But if the zero year was absent, the 20th century expires only at the end of 2000. Many astronomers consider the century-old years ending with "00, the beginning of a new century. As you know, the date of Easter is constantly changing: it can occur on any day from March 22 to April 25 inclusive. According to the rule, Easter (Catholic) should be on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox (March 21). Moreover, according to the English treasury, "... if the full moon comes on Sunday, then Easter will be next Sunday ". This date having a greater Of great historical importance, it has been the subject of much debate and debate.The amendments of Pope Gregory XIII were accepted by many churches, but since the calculation of the date of Easter is based on the lunar phases, it cannot have a specific date in the solar calendar.
CALENDAR REFORM
Although the Gregorian calendar is very accurate and consistent with natural phenomena, its modern structure does not fully meet the needs of public life. Talk has been going on for a long time about improving the calendar, and various associations are even emerging to carry out such a reform.
The disadvantages of the Gregorian calendar. This calendar has about a dozen defects. Chief among them is the variability in the number of days and weeks in months, quarters, and semesters. For example, quarters contain 90, 91, or 92 days. There are four main problems: 1) Theoretically, the civil (calendar) year should have the same duration as the astronomical (tropical) year. However, this is not possible because the tropical year does not contain an integer day. Due to the need to add an extra day in the year from time to time, there are two types of years - regular and leap years. Since a year can start from any day of the week, this gives 7 types of ordinary and 7 types of leap years, i.e. only 14 types of years. For their full reproduction, you need to wait 28 years. 2) The duration of the months is different: they can contain from 28 to 31 days, and this unevenness leads to certain difficulties in economic calculations and statistics. 3) Neither the regular nor the leap years contain an integer number of weeks. The semesters, quarters and months also do not contain a whole and equal number of weeks. 4) From week to week, from month to month, and even from year to year, the correspondence of dates and days of the week changes, so it is difficult to establish the moments of various events. For example, Thanksgiving always falls on Thursday, but the day of the month changes. Christmas always falls on December 25th, but on different days of the week.
Suggested enhancements. There are many proposals for reforming the calendar, of which the following are discussed more often than others:
International Fixed Calendar This is an improved version of the 13-month calendar, proposed in 1849 by the French philosopher, the founder of positivism O. Comte (1798-1857). It was developed by the English statistician M. Cotsworth (1859-1943), who founded the Fixed Calendar League in 1942. This calendar contains 13 months of 28 days each; all months are the same and start on Sunday. Leaving the first six months of the twelve their usual names, Cotsworth inserted the 7th month “Sol” between them. One extra day (365 - 13ґ28), called Day of the Year, follows after December 28th. If the year is a leap year, then another Leap day is inserted after June 28th. These "balancing" days in the account of the days of the week are not taken into account. Cotsworth proposed abolishing the names of the months and using Roman numerals to denote them. The 13-month calendar is very uniform and easy to use: the year is easily divided into months and weeks, and the month is divided into weeks. If a month were used in economic statistics instead of six months and quarters, such a calendar would be a success; but 13 months is difficult to divide into six months and quarters. The problems are caused by the sharp difference between this calendar and the current one. Its introduction will require great efforts to gain the consent of influential groups committed to tradition.
World Calendar This 12-month calendar was developed by decision of the 1914 International Commercial Congress and was heavily promoted by many supporters. In 1930 E. Ahelis organized the World Calendar Association, publishing since 1931 the "Calendar Reform Journal". The main unit of the World Calendar is the quarter of the year. Every week and year begins on Sunday. The first three months comprise 31, 30 and 30 days, respectively. Each next quarter is the same as the first. The names of the months are kept current. Leap year day (June W) is inserted after June 30, and Year end day (Peace Day) is inserted after December 30. Opponents of the World Calendar consider it a drawback that each month consists of a non-integer number of weeks and therefore begins with an arbitrary day of the week. Advocates of this calendar consider it to be an advantage similar to the current calendar.
Perpetual Calendar This 12-month calendar is offered by W. Edwards of Honolulu (Hawaii). Edwards perpetual calendar is divided into four 3-month quarters. Every week and every quarter starts on Monday, which is very beneficial for business. The first two months of each quarter contain 30 days, and the last 31. The holiday is New Year's Day between December 31 and January 1, and the Leap Year Day appears every 4 years between June 31 and July 1. A nice feature of the Perpetual Calendar is that Friday never gets on the 13th. On several occasions, the U.S. House of Representatives even introduced a bill to officially switch to this calendar.
LITERATURE
Bickerman E. Timeline the ancient world. M., 1975 Butkevich A.V., Zelikson M.S. Eternal calendars. M., 1984 Volodomonov N.V., Calendar: past, present, future. M., 1987 Klimishin I.A., Calendar and chronology. M., 1990 Kulikov S. Thread of the times: a small calendar encyclopedia. M., 1991
To successfully study history, you need to know well what a calendar is, how it appeared, and what calendars exist.
The calendar called the system of calculating time, based on the periodicity of the visible movements of the sun and moon.
The first-ever calendar appeared in Ancient Babylon. It was a lunar calendar - a system of measuring time associated with change appearance Moon (moon phase). The time between the same phases is called month. Unfortunately, the lunar calendar does not reflect the changing seasons, and over time, people began to use solar calendaring based on motion observation
The sun in the sky. According to this system, time is divided into years and days (days). To facilitate the calculation of time, days are conventionally combined into weeks and months.
The oldest calendar was created around 2500 BC. e. in Mesopotamia. It consisted of twelve months and was solar-lunar, but since it lagged behind the solar calendar, it was necessary to regularly add several days to it so that the calendar did not diverge from the seasons of field work.
The count of time in antiquity was different from the modern. The ancient Greeks began the day at dawn, and the Germans - at night. The peoples who often fought divided the day into "guards." For the Babylonians and Jews, there were three guardians per day, for the Romans - four. The day lasted for night and day, which lasted 12 hours. Since the length of the day during the year was not constant, the hours also had different durations.
In lunar calendars, the duration of the months is the same - 30 days, but these calendars do not accurately measure the duration of the year.
At the end of the year, the Egyptians began to add 5 days so that it was 365 days, there was no division into weeks. The Egyptians divided the year into seasons of field work, the names of which were associated with natural phenomena: the flood season, the season of the river's return to shore and the low water season. All major seasons lasted four months.
Timeline of the emergence of calendars: Material from the site
- Initial ancient roman calendar (time of occurrence is reliably unknown).
- Julian calendar (It was introduced around 45 BC by Julius Caesar; the Orthodox Church still uses this calendar).
- Gregorian calendar(introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII; used today).
In Ukraine and Russia, the Gregorian calendar has been in effect since January 31, 1918. After February 1, February 14 came. Since then, the concepts of “old style” and “new style” have been used. The difference between them is 13 days. Therefore, in addition to the New Year, we also celebrate the Old New Year, which begins on the night of January 14th.
It doesn’t matter with the accuracy of the calendar, for example, earlier the year began on April 1. The old Julian calendar, adopted by Julius Caesar on the basis of the recommendations of the astronomer Sosigen, also fits this description.
The Julian calendar was extremely simple and actually solved the only problem: to coordinate the duration of the calendar with the duration of the solar year. At the same time, the beginning of the year, the duration and the beginning of the months were in no way associated with the moon and solar cycles. Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 introduced a minor change that improved the consistency of the calendar with the solar year.
The average duration in the Julian calendar is 365.25 days, while the solar year is 365.2422 days. Such a mismatch in the Julian calendar led to a day delay of 128 years, and by 1582 the lag was 10 days. Pope Gregory approved the following in the Julian calendar: years that are multiples of 100 years, which are not divided by 4 without a remainder after division by 100, are not considered leap years. This reduced the calendar error to one day at 4240 years, and in fact means that 1900 and 2100 are not considered leap years, unlike 2000. However, both the Gregorian and Julian calendars can be considered civilian, since the dates of many religious holidays are calculated in a special way. For example, Christian Easter does not have a fixed date on the calendar, but is celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon that occurred after the vernal equinox and a week after the Jewish Passover.
There are still two different Gregorian calendars. The first is that since it is the simplest and most understandable, let it be the standard (de facto, it is for Western countries). Some believe that such "simplicity is worse than theft," and use a calendar synchronized with the solar and lunar cycles, that is, they will try to combine civil and religious time. Such floating calendars are used in many Asian and Islamic states.
Unfortunately, an ideal calendar is not possible, since it is impossible to find an absolutely accurate common denominator for the cycles of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. Different cycles were chosen for the role of the temporary "skeleton" of the calendar in different ones, which was determined by geography and the main occupation of the population. The most famous is the 19-year-old Meton cycle, which the Greek mathematician Meton described in the 5th century BC. For such a period, the Moon and the Sun return to almost the same position relative to the Earth and the stars as at the beginning of the period. This cycle, equal to 235 lunar (synodal) months, is significant for some modern calendars. In many eastern lunar calendars, it is used for lunar-solar synchronization. Meton did his calculations using a vertical gnomon (in fact, a sundial) in Athens.
To evaluate different calendars, you can enter an indicator such as its error - that is, the duration of the year, calculated in sunny days in accordance with this calendar system. An astronomical year could be taken as a standard, which in days is 365.242198. This is the duration of the complete revolution of the Earth around the Sun, calculated relative to fixed stars, taking into account the precession, that is, the rotation of the earth's axis. The full cycle of precession takes 25800 years, and in ancient astronomy it is known as the Platonic year. Thus, if we take into account this motion, then the complete revolution of the Earth around the Sun will occur a little bit faster than it does in the solar system. However, with the gnomonics, it will be more natural to take the tropical year as the standard, that is, the interval between the two points of the vernal equinox. The tropical year is 365.2424 days.
As will be clear, not all calendars are tied to solar cycles, so the indicator of solar accuracy will not make sense to them.
Comparing calendars by accuracy, it should be borne in mind that any calendar is a consolidation of temporary symbolism in the deep memory of the people. That is why ideas about possess extreme conservatism and constancy and it is unlikely that they can simply be changed, even for the sake of accuracy.
Ancient calendars
Long before our era, sophisticated astronomical observations were made in Sumer, Egypt, China, India and America with the help of the gnomon and primitive tools. For example, in China for a thousand years BC, the inclination of the earth's axis was calculated as 23 ° 54 ". The known deviation differs from the calculated deviation by less than half a degree and is about 23 ° 27" (such an error and the school protractor cannot measure). In addition to the Sun and Moon, our ancestors watched Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, as well as some bright stars. All these extremely complex and fairly accurate observations formed the basis of what is now commonly called astronomy, and at that time it was part of gnomonics and astrology. Initially, the gnomon was used to determine the local meridian (north-south direction), as well as to observe the cycles of passage of stars and planets through the local meridian. Ordinary life was built according to a schedule that assumed a count of days that was understandable to the people and coincided with the rhythm of collective work. Therefore, solar cycles formed the basis of calendars of agricultural communities, and lunar cycles were important for pastoralists, hunters and fishermen.
Mayan Calendar. In it, an attempt was made to combine two times at once: civil and sacred. The 260-day cycle determined the cult routine, it repeated the names of the days and the day of the week, it was called tzolkin. The next cycle is a four-year one, and the name of the day and the day of the month are repeated in it. The civil year - tun - Maya was 365 days and consisted of 13 months of 20 days and 5 holidays at the end. Four years later, the new year fell on the same month, but on different dates of the 13-day week. 20 tuna formed a katun, 20 katuns a baktun, and finally 13 baktuns formed a great cycle of 5130 years. There was also a 52-year cycle (13 times for 4 years), which synchronized the cycles of 365 and 260 days. The accuracy of the Mayan solar calendar is 365,242,129 days! Usually, the fact of such high accuracy, as well as proximity to the astronomical, greatly excites the imagination of ufologists. However, the true causes of the cycles chosen by the Indians remain unknown. It is also unclear why, the Mayans felt such a reverent attitude towards the numbers 13 and 20, in contrast to the Sumerian 12, 24, 30 and 60, which underlie our modern account of time.
Chinese calendar. A typical example of a "floating" calendar, which is based on the cycles of the moon and two planets: Jupiter (about 12 times for 12 lunar months) and Saturn (about 30 times for 12 lunar months). years, that is, the number of 12-year cycles in a 60-year one, coincides with the number of symbolic primary elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Each element has its own color: blue (or green), red, yellow, white, black; own planet: Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, and time of year: spring, summer, end of summer, autumn, winter. This account is both generally accepted (civilian) and sacred, since it is inextricably linked with eastern astrology. It can also be considered commercial, taking into account how much money China makes by making colorful animals for the new (a white iron hare is promised to us for a year). The Chinese calendar is common in some southeastern countries.
Celtic calendar. Celtic civilization left us a whole temple in the form of megaliths of Stonehenge. This was done by the Druid priests about 4,000 years ago in the south of England. Interestingly, the Celts knew the exact 56-year cycle of repetition of the solar and lunar cycles (18.7 years). That is, they used a more accurate meton cycle 1,500 years before the respected Greek, and it is safe to say that the Celts in their calendar used a combination of moon and solar cycles.
Solar and lunar calendars
More understandable calendars appeared later. Historically, hunters and fishermen built their calendars on the phases of the moon. The moon played a major role in magical rites, and in linking civil to months and years. Such calendars are built on the lunar (synodic) month, the duration of which is several times a day - about 29.53. Therefore, in many lunar calendars, the duration of months alternates: then 29, then 30 days. The beginning either “floats” or is periodically adjusted by inserting additional months. Lunar calendars were the basis of the cultures of the East: Babylonians, Chinese, Jews, Hindus, Japanese.
Farmers preferred a strict seasonal division of the phases of the sun. The Egyptian calendar was typical. The year lasted exactly 360 days, consisted of 12 months of 30 days. The remaining 5 days are an eternal problem for those who want to take the phase of the Sun as the basis of the calendar. Since these days violate perfect harmony, they usually treated them negatively. There was a period when they were not counted, but simply believed in the priests, who declared that "in this at the end there will be so many days that are not pleasing to the gods." This approach is very similar to the Mayan civil year, except that 360 days of Maya were divided into 13 months by 20 days. In Egypt, the beginning was associated with the appearance of Sirius above the horizon (the moment coincided with the spill of the Nile), but it is more natural to consider the beginning of the sunny spring equinox, the nearest full moon from which is considered the beginning in many lunar calendars.
The era of Julius Caesar was completely confused over time, so the introduction of a calendar was a necessity. With his appearance, the account became completely civil and accessible to ordinary people. The fact is that before the Julian calendar, time in Rome was a mystery to the people and it was announced by the pontiff priests on the basis of astronomical observations, and then just personal considerations. Obviously, such secrecy in relation to nothing had anything to do with sacred meaning.
The Julian calendar is basically a typical solar calendar. The names of the months came partly from Greek, partly from Roman mythology. The accuracy of the Julian calendar is 365.25 sunny days, and the Gregorian calendar is 365.2425. The fact that the beginning is fixed and in no way connected with astronomical phenomena makes the Gregorian calendar very convenient and simple.
Single calendar
Of the relatively modern solar calendars, successfully combining the lunar and solar cycles, the Persian calendar has been undeservedly forgotten.
Like the Gregorian, it is based on the period of the Earth's revolution around the Sun. The year in such a calendar is tied to the seasons and begins at the vernal equinox. In a year there are 12 months, the first six for 31 days, the next for 30, the month is 29 days in a normal year and 30 days in a leap year. Pretty accurately, such a calendar corresponds to the zodiac. The beginning is considered to be the transition of the Sun (in local time) from the southern hemisphere to the northern. On average, 33 have 8 leapfrogs. A leap year is a year when dividing the numerical value by 33 the remainder is 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 22, 26 or 30. At one time, this calendar was used in Iran. Its accuracy is very good - 365.24242 days. The famous Arab mathematician, poet and Sufi Omar Khayyam participated in the development of this calendar.
Speaking about the modern account of time, it is necessary to touch on a rather delicate topic: what to count from? The Gregorian and Julian calendars count the time from the birth of Jesus Christ. The count of times in the Muslim calendar is kept from the hijra, that is, the date of the move of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, which corresponds to July 16, 622 according to the Julian calendar. According to Jewish ideas, the new moon of the Universe, that is, the beginning of the countdown, occurred in 3761 BC, on Monday, at 5 o’clock and 204 parts of the afternoon.
The introduction of a single calendar is hardly possible precisely because the beginning of the account is the fundamental basis of various religious beliefs. The fact that the Gregorian calendar is, de facto, an “Esperanto calendar” proves once again its convenience and simplicity, but the internal rhythm of different cultures is immeasurably more complex and diverse.