Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
How calendars encode a culture
A calendar's epoch, months, and moons are choices about what time is for.
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From the opening
A calendar is a rule for cutting time into years, months, and days, and the rule encodes what a culture needs time to do. Choosing a solar year, a lunar month, or a count that starts at a sacred event is a decision about which cycle matters and which moment is year one. The opening covers year one is a cultural hinge, solar seasons versus lunar months, and leap months keep both cycles.
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Inside
- Year one is a cultural hinge
- Solar seasons versus lunar months
- Leap months keep both cycles
- One sky, more than one count
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- The Gregorian reform of the Julian calendar
- Lunar and lunisolar calendars, including the Hijri and Hebrew counts