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Thursday, March 6, 2008

Who invented the calendar?


Who invented the calendar?

Celestial bodies, the sun, moon, planets and stars have provided man with a reference for measuring the passage of time throughout our existence. Ancient civilizations relied upon the apparent motion of these bodies through the sky to determine seasons, months and years.

Five thousand years ago Sumerians in the Euphrates – Tigris valley in today’s Iraq had a calendar that divided the year into 30-day months, divided the day into 12 periods (each corresponding to 2 of our hours), and divided these periods into 30 parts (each like 4 of our minutes).

There are no written records of the creating of Stonehenge, built over 4000 years ago in England, but its alignments show its purposes apparently included the determination of seasonal or celestial events such as lunar eclipses, solstices and so on.

The earliest Egyptian calendar was based on the moon’s cycles, but later the Egyptians realized that the “Dog Star” in Canis Major, which is now called Sirius, rose next to the sun every 365 days, about when the annual inundation of the Nile began. Base on this knowledge, they devised a 365-day calendar that seems to have begun in 4236 BC, the earliest recorded year in history. In Babylonia, again in Iraq, a year of 12 alternating 29-day and 30-day lunar months was observed before 2000 BC giving a 354-day year.

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