The Calendar

A detailed Summary of The Calendar

Kara Byers 1CH tutor: Dr. Gerard McCartan

'It took several thousand years to establish a satisfactory calendar. Even in this century not all the countries in Europe kept the same calendar. Why was it so difficult? Do we really need an accurate means of recording civil time?

Astronomy originated earlier in human history than the other natural sciences. In the earliest civilisations, the divine or occult was used to explain the movement of the stars and the Sun: the Aztecs, for example, believed that the Sun had to be nourished with a sacrifice of blood and a beating human heart, or else it would vanish. In those dark days there was no conflict between science and religion: a priest, magician or shaman would jealously guard scientific knowledge of the seasons and calendar. Knowledge, regarded as a sign of divine work in the world, conferred immense status on priests in their community, because they were able to foretell the future with some success. Astronomy meant power over people. It guided Man through the seasons, showing when to plough, to harvest or to move herds. Religious and sacrificial acts also had to be performed on specific occasions, for example, to coincide with the

So, do we really need an accurate means of recording civil time? It appears that we do in order to maintain order and function in our society. What is required is a calendar which maintains a close approximation to its astronomical basis, and which is repeated in a stable, uniform, simple and regular order. The present calendar amply fulfils these requirements.

We thank the Egyptians for the twenty-four hour day, running from sunrise to sunrise. A twelve-hour cycle fitted the movement of the stars across the sky, with an hour marking out the time between each star, or group of stars, rising on the eastern horizon. In this way, the twelve hour night evolved and, probably for the sake of symmetry, a twelve hour day. The Egyptians measured the passing daylight hours with the water clocks, where the flow of time was measured by water trickling through a hole in a stone vessel, and with sundials and shadow clocks, where a sweeping shadow showed the passing hours. The last two furnished merely 'temporal hours'; they were not equal and varied according to the seasons. In Japan, temporal hours were still in use in the nineteenth century and mechanical clocks were adapted accordingly, but in Europe, the day was carved in to twenty-four equal hours in the fourteenth century, when towns introduced mechanical clocks.

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Approximate Word count = 1830
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous

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The Calendar

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