2: Calendars
The builders of the ancient site of Stonehenge clearly understood the cyclic nature of the relationship between the Sun, the Moon and the Earth. This inevitably led to an appreciation of what we term the calendar, which is really only a formal recognition of these relationships. All calendars are, by definition, recorded and, in modern times, they are written documents. In very ancient times, before the development of writing, they would have been set out using stones, generally in a circle, so that they could be used repeatedly over many decades. It is the problem faced when trying to fix the positions of those stones that was addressed by Stonehenge. It clearly had many other purposes, but its development over a very long period showed how its designers attempted to come to terms with the separate cycles of the Moon, the Sun and various star systems in the sky above the Earth.
The structures of these stone calendars are not at all clear, as they are no longer complete, and deciphering what remains is further complicated by ignoring their part in our history, both before and after their prime time of use. To understand the knowledge which was built into these calendars, it is best to examine their successors which were written down, as in some instances they appear to be clearer in their intentions and structure. However, their history is directly related to the history of writing, since without such a development, they simply would not exist. Consequently, history of written calendars dates back only to the third millennium BC, which coincides with the general period of the final construction date of Stonehenge.
The Babylonian calendar in Mesopotamia (parts of what are now Syria and Iraq) was, like most calendars, based on the Moon and Sun cycles. Each month began with the first sighting of the new Moon. By 2400 BC, Sumerian scribes were using a 'schematic' year based on twelve months of thirty days each giving a 360-day year. In the 21st century BC, it was observed that adjustments of the lunar calendar, giving a year of about 354 days (12 x 29½ days) had to be adjusted to coincide with the solar year of 365 days. It appears that these adjustments, achieved by inserting whole months, were quite random over the whole region.
The structures of these stone calendars are not at all clear, as they are no longer complete, and deciphering what remains is further complicated by ignoring their part in our history, both before and after their prime time of use. To understand the knowledge which was built into these calendars, it is best to examine their successors which were written down, as in some instances they appear to be clearer in their intentions and structure. However, their history is directly related to the history of writing, since without such a development, they simply would not exist. Consequently, history of written calendars dates back only to the third millennium BC, which coincides with the general period of the final construction date of Stonehenge.
The Babylonian calendar in Mesopotamia (parts of what are now Syria and Iraq) was, like most calendars, based on the Moon and Sun cycles. Each month began with the first sighting of the new Moon. By 2400 BC, Sumerian scribes were using a 'schematic' year based on twelve months of thirty days each giving a 360-day year. In the 21st century BC, it was observed that adjustments of the lunar calendar, giving a year of about 354 days (12 x 29½ days) had to be adjusted to coincide with the solar year of 365 days. It appears that these adjustments, achieved by inserting whole months, were quite random over the whole region.
Persia apparently also used the Babylonian calendar, but in northern Persia, from at least the 1st century BC, the Zoroastrian calendar was used, consisting of twelve months of 30 days each, plus five additional days to agree with the solar cycle.
The Egyptians also used a lunar calendar, but it was regulated by the seasonal appearance of the star Sirius which had a cycle only some twelve minutes shorter than the solar year. They devised a civil calendar of 365 days which consisted of three seasons, each of four months of 30 days each. Five intercalary days were added at the end to make up the total. But because the lunar year was controlled by Sirius, the months fell in the same solar seasons (winter, spring, summer, etc.) each year. The same could not be said of the civil calendar, which was short by one quarter of a day each year.
The ancient Greek calendars were based on the Moon's cycles. However, there was a controlling influence from observation of the constellations and star groups, and the rising of The Pleiades before dawn coincided with the harvest. The Macedonians (Macedonia was part of former Yugoslavia) also used a lunar year of about 354 days, matching this with the solar year by inserting a month into the calendar every alternate year. However, such adjustments appeared to have taken the 'lunar calendar' away from the true motions of the Moon.
During the 1st millennium BC, the early Roman calendar started in March and consisted of ten months, six of which were of 30 days and four of 31 days, giving a total of 304 days. The year finished in December, after which there was a winter gap of an uncounted number of days. Quite how they knew when the new calendar started is open to speculation. The Jewish calendar, however, was based on twelve lunations, but there seems to have been some alignment with the course of the Sun in order to fix the seasons. It is interesting that the Bible does not mention either 'intercalation' or New Year's Day.
The years of the Muslim calendar are also lunar and consist of twelve lunar months of alternately 29 and 30 days each, beginning with the new Moon. This gives a year of 354 days and as there is no intercalation, the months do not keep to the same solar seasons. In the Far East the earliest Hindu calendars date back to about 1000 BC and divide an approximate solar year of 360 days into twelve lunar months of 27 or 28 days. A month was added (intercalated) every sixty months. Records show that by the 14th century BC, the Shang dynasty of China knew that the solar year was 365¼ days and the lunar period was of 29½ days, which demonstrates their early superiority in astronomy. There is evidence of various structures of calendar, all attempting to adjust a number of lunar cycles to keep pace with the solar year, but other than that, there is no clear information on the basis of their calendar.
The Mayan peoples, who colonised ancient Middle America (the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and parts of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), had a calendar which consisted of a ritual cycle of 260 named days and a year of 365 days. The year was divided into eighteen named months of 20 days each, with an additional five days of 'evil omen', called Uayeb. The Mexican Aztec calendar was similar to that of the Maya and it too had 365 days consisting of 18 months of 20 days each, with an additional five very unlucky days called Nemontemi. They also celebrated every eight years the coincidence of five cycles of the 584-day period of Venus. Very little is known factually of the Inca calendar in Peru because they did not use a written language. Opinions of early colonial chroniclers vary widely and cannot be checked, but the only agreement that they have is that the Incas used a luni-solar system which was related to the stars. At Cuzco, research has shown that there was an official calendar based on the sidereal month of 272 days. The year of 328 nights (12 x 272) began on June 8th/9th which coincided with the heliacal rising (just preceding the Sun in the dawn sky) of The Pleiades.
A similar situation exists with the ancient inhabitants of North America. They too, with perhaps one exception, did not have a written language, and early explorers were not able to learn of any calendrical systems which may have existed as they were probably sacred and kept secret. It is quite possible that they had a complex system to match their beliefs, but this must remain pure speculation.
The basic unit of the calendar is the day, and while we currently measure this from midnight to midnight, this has not always been the situation. Astronomers, from about the 2nd century AD to the early part of this century recorded the days from noon to noon. For ancient races, however, the day went from dawn to dawn, a series of days being called dawns or suns. While this was retained by the Egyptians and Hindus, the Babylonians, Jews and Greeks replaced the ancient system by measuring the day from sunset to sunset. The Teutons, however, counted nights and it is from this that a series of fourteen days is called a fortnight.
The day was divided in many different ways. It seems that the Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all had a day of twenty-four hours, split into twelve hours of daylight and twelve of darkness. This, it should be remembered, relates directly with the situation at the time of the spring and autumn Equinoxes (21st March and 22nd September), when the two periods have equal hours. This 1/24th division of the day was not used by the church, as it preferred to relate the day to times of worship, splitting the period into seven : matins, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline. It is thought that the use in Babylonia (part of what is now Iraq) of 24 for the number of units in a day came from the Sumerian sexagesimal system, based on gradations of 60 (i.e. 12 x 5 = 60) rather than on a decimal system of 10, but the use of two elements of 12 in the day has much deeper implications. The Babylonians also divided the day into six equal watches, which has military overtones, splitting each watch into half and quarter units.
Historians do not seem to be clear on the background to the seven day week, but by the first century BC, the Jewish system appears to have been adopted in the Roman Empire, and this was later to affect Christendom. The current English names for the days of the week come from Anglo-Saxon or Latin names of Gods although it is very likely that the earlier Celtic names would have predated these.
It is evident that the calendar is the device by which we anticipate events. But the most basic of those, relating to the Sun, are fixed, and it is the calendar which has been altered to coincide with those events. Calendars have gone through many adjustments in order to meet the requirements of religious and civil leaders of the time. Certain key events which occur annually are now recognised as taking place at familiar times, such as Christmas, the Equinoxes and the Solstices, but because of these adjustments, they have not always occurred at the same date on the calendar. Christmas has presented specific problems for the historians, and has therefore been moved to meet the prevailing opinion. The cycles of the Sun, however, do not change and so any alteration in the date of the Equinoxes and Solstices would have occurred because the calendar was changed.
The Julian calendar, devised by Julius Caesar in 45 BC on the advice of the Greek astronomer Sosigenes, is solar based and consists of 365 days. Every fourth year this is adjusted by one to 366 days and is termed a leap year. Unfortunately, the Julian year of 365.25 days was found to be too long, as the tropical year (from Spring Equinox to the next Spring Equinox) is 365.242199 days. By 1545 AD, the Spring Equinox, used to determine the date of Easter, occurred some ten days early according to the calendar. Hence, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII instructed that ten days should be dropped from the calendar and that in future, century years would only be leap years if they were divisible exactly by 400. Hence 1600 and 2000 are leap years while 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain in 1752, the adjustment amounted to eleven days and the day after 2nd September 1752 became 14th September 1752. This calendar established 1st January as the beginning of the new year. Previously under the Julian calendar it had begun on December 25th, and then from the 14th century, on the 25th March.
In 1583, the French scholar Scaliger proposed that the epoch of the Julian era should be 1st January 4713 BC, at noon. It appears that many of the ancient dating cycles coincided at that time, and it therefore became possible to compare dates from different systems.
The establishment of the BC/AD dating system is interesting, as it identifies a form of numbering related to a religious period which itself has to be accepted in the adopting country. In 463 AD, Pope Hilarius appointed Victorius of Aquitaine to undertake calendar revision. Victorius devised the Great Paschal (passover) period which was a combination of the solar cycle and the Metonic cycle. The solar cycle is a period after which the days of the seven-day week repeat on the same dates. Since one year contains 52 weeks of seven days, plus one day, the days of the week repeat every seven years were no leap year to intervene. A Julian calendar leap year cycle is four years, therefore the days of the week repeat on the same date every 4 x 7 = 28 years. The Metonic cycle is rather more complicated and is named after the astronomer Meton of Athens, who, in 432 BC, attempted to draw a relationship between the Moon and Sun cycles over a period of 19 lunar years (6940 days).
The Great Paschal period brought the full Moon back to the same day of the month and amounted to 532 years (28 x 19). As this period provided the day of the week for any day in any year, Dionysius Exiguus, in the 6th century AD, used it to work out the date of Easter. He took the year, now termed 532 AD, as the first of a new period, and termed the first of the previous period as 1 BC. At this time, it was generally felt that this had been the year of the birth of Christ and so he established the principle of numbering the years consecutively in the Christian era. The date of Easter is set through a combination of Moon and Sun cycles. During the 4th century AD, it was agreed that Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday following the full Moon which fell on or after the Spring Equinox, generally accepted to be 21st March.
While the background history of the various calendar systems around the world is rather incomplete, there is no obvious connection with dating systems which must have preceded any documented system. The Celtic races, who occupied the British Isles and some of Western Europe, have not left evidence of using written records, and it is possible that they inherited successors to such ancient systems.
The Celts had what is termed a Feast Year which was divided into four parts, each of which was started by major religious celebrations that commemorated a god, hero or legend. These celebrations would be accompanied by the usual fairs, markets, games and revelries, as well as religious ceremonies. The four parts of the Feast Year were:
The Egyptians also used a lunar calendar, but it was regulated by the seasonal appearance of the star Sirius which had a cycle only some twelve minutes shorter than the solar year. They devised a civil calendar of 365 days which consisted of three seasons, each of four months of 30 days each. Five intercalary days were added at the end to make up the total. But because the lunar year was controlled by Sirius, the months fell in the same solar seasons (winter, spring, summer, etc.) each year. The same could not be said of the civil calendar, which was short by one quarter of a day each year.
The ancient Greek calendars were based on the Moon's cycles. However, there was a controlling influence from observation of the constellations and star groups, and the rising of The Pleiades before dawn coincided with the harvest. The Macedonians (Macedonia was part of former Yugoslavia) also used a lunar year of about 354 days, matching this with the solar year by inserting a month into the calendar every alternate year. However, such adjustments appeared to have taken the 'lunar calendar' away from the true motions of the Moon.
During the 1st millennium BC, the early Roman calendar started in March and consisted of ten months, six of which were of 30 days and four of 31 days, giving a total of 304 days. The year finished in December, after which there was a winter gap of an uncounted number of days. Quite how they knew when the new calendar started is open to speculation. The Jewish calendar, however, was based on twelve lunations, but there seems to have been some alignment with the course of the Sun in order to fix the seasons. It is interesting that the Bible does not mention either 'intercalation' or New Year's Day.
The years of the Muslim calendar are also lunar and consist of twelve lunar months of alternately 29 and 30 days each, beginning with the new Moon. This gives a year of 354 days and as there is no intercalation, the months do not keep to the same solar seasons. In the Far East the earliest Hindu calendars date back to about 1000 BC and divide an approximate solar year of 360 days into twelve lunar months of 27 or 28 days. A month was added (intercalated) every sixty months. Records show that by the 14th century BC, the Shang dynasty of China knew that the solar year was 365¼ days and the lunar period was of 29½ days, which demonstrates their early superiority in astronomy. There is evidence of various structures of calendar, all attempting to adjust a number of lunar cycles to keep pace with the solar year, but other than that, there is no clear information on the basis of their calendar.
The Mayan peoples, who colonised ancient Middle America (the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and parts of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), had a calendar which consisted of a ritual cycle of 260 named days and a year of 365 days. The year was divided into eighteen named months of 20 days each, with an additional five days of 'evil omen', called Uayeb. The Mexican Aztec calendar was similar to that of the Maya and it too had 365 days consisting of 18 months of 20 days each, with an additional five very unlucky days called Nemontemi. They also celebrated every eight years the coincidence of five cycles of the 584-day period of Venus. Very little is known factually of the Inca calendar in Peru because they did not use a written language. Opinions of early colonial chroniclers vary widely and cannot be checked, but the only agreement that they have is that the Incas used a luni-solar system which was related to the stars. At Cuzco, research has shown that there was an official calendar based on the sidereal month of 272 days. The year of 328 nights (12 x 272) began on June 8th/9th which coincided with the heliacal rising (just preceding the Sun in the dawn sky) of The Pleiades.
A similar situation exists with the ancient inhabitants of North America. They too, with perhaps one exception, did not have a written language, and early explorers were not able to learn of any calendrical systems which may have existed as they were probably sacred and kept secret. It is quite possible that they had a complex system to match their beliefs, but this must remain pure speculation.
The basic unit of the calendar is the day, and while we currently measure this from midnight to midnight, this has not always been the situation. Astronomers, from about the 2nd century AD to the early part of this century recorded the days from noon to noon. For ancient races, however, the day went from dawn to dawn, a series of days being called dawns or suns. While this was retained by the Egyptians and Hindus, the Babylonians, Jews and Greeks replaced the ancient system by measuring the day from sunset to sunset. The Teutons, however, counted nights and it is from this that a series of fourteen days is called a fortnight.
The day was divided in many different ways. It seems that the Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all had a day of twenty-four hours, split into twelve hours of daylight and twelve of darkness. This, it should be remembered, relates directly with the situation at the time of the spring and autumn Equinoxes (21st March and 22nd September), when the two periods have equal hours. This 1/24th division of the day was not used by the church, as it preferred to relate the day to times of worship, splitting the period into seven : matins, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline. It is thought that the use in Babylonia (part of what is now Iraq) of 24 for the number of units in a day came from the Sumerian sexagesimal system, based on gradations of 60 (i.e. 12 x 5 = 60) rather than on a decimal system of 10, but the use of two elements of 12 in the day has much deeper implications. The Babylonians also divided the day into six equal watches, which has military overtones, splitting each watch into half and quarter units.
Historians do not seem to be clear on the background to the seven day week, but by the first century BC, the Jewish system appears to have been adopted in the Roman Empire, and this was later to affect Christendom. The current English names for the days of the week come from Anglo-Saxon or Latin names of Gods although it is very likely that the earlier Celtic names would have predated these.
It is evident that the calendar is the device by which we anticipate events. But the most basic of those, relating to the Sun, are fixed, and it is the calendar which has been altered to coincide with those events. Calendars have gone through many adjustments in order to meet the requirements of religious and civil leaders of the time. Certain key events which occur annually are now recognised as taking place at familiar times, such as Christmas, the Equinoxes and the Solstices, but because of these adjustments, they have not always occurred at the same date on the calendar. Christmas has presented specific problems for the historians, and has therefore been moved to meet the prevailing opinion. The cycles of the Sun, however, do not change and so any alteration in the date of the Equinoxes and Solstices would have occurred because the calendar was changed.
The Julian calendar, devised by Julius Caesar in 45 BC on the advice of the Greek astronomer Sosigenes, is solar based and consists of 365 days. Every fourth year this is adjusted by one to 366 days and is termed a leap year. Unfortunately, the Julian year of 365.25 days was found to be too long, as the tropical year (from Spring Equinox to the next Spring Equinox) is 365.242199 days. By 1545 AD, the Spring Equinox, used to determine the date of Easter, occurred some ten days early according to the calendar. Hence, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII instructed that ten days should be dropped from the calendar and that in future, century years would only be leap years if they were divisible exactly by 400. Hence 1600 and 2000 are leap years while 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain in 1752, the adjustment amounted to eleven days and the day after 2nd September 1752 became 14th September 1752. This calendar established 1st January as the beginning of the new year. Previously under the Julian calendar it had begun on December 25th, and then from the 14th century, on the 25th March.
In 1583, the French scholar Scaliger proposed that the epoch of the Julian era should be 1st January 4713 BC, at noon. It appears that many of the ancient dating cycles coincided at that time, and it therefore became possible to compare dates from different systems.
The establishment of the BC/AD dating system is interesting, as it identifies a form of numbering related to a religious period which itself has to be accepted in the adopting country. In 463 AD, Pope Hilarius appointed Victorius of Aquitaine to undertake calendar revision. Victorius devised the Great Paschal (passover) period which was a combination of the solar cycle and the Metonic cycle. The solar cycle is a period after which the days of the seven-day week repeat on the same dates. Since one year contains 52 weeks of seven days, plus one day, the days of the week repeat every seven years were no leap year to intervene. A Julian calendar leap year cycle is four years, therefore the days of the week repeat on the same date every 4 x 7 = 28 years. The Metonic cycle is rather more complicated and is named after the astronomer Meton of Athens, who, in 432 BC, attempted to draw a relationship between the Moon and Sun cycles over a period of 19 lunar years (6940 days).
The Great Paschal period brought the full Moon back to the same day of the month and amounted to 532 years (28 x 19). As this period provided the day of the week for any day in any year, Dionysius Exiguus, in the 6th century AD, used it to work out the date of Easter. He took the year, now termed 532 AD, as the first of a new period, and termed the first of the previous period as 1 BC. At this time, it was generally felt that this had been the year of the birth of Christ and so he established the principle of numbering the years consecutively in the Christian era. The date of Easter is set through a combination of Moon and Sun cycles. During the 4th century AD, it was agreed that Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday following the full Moon which fell on or after the Spring Equinox, generally accepted to be 21st March.
While the background history of the various calendar systems around the world is rather incomplete, there is no obvious connection with dating systems which must have preceded any documented system. The Celtic races, who occupied the British Isles and some of Western Europe, have not left evidence of using written records, and it is possible that they inherited successors to such ancient systems.
The Celts had what is termed a Feast Year which was divided into four parts, each of which was started by major religious celebrations that commemorated a god, hero or legend. These celebrations would be accompanied by the usual fairs, markets, games and revelries, as well as religious ceremonies. The four parts of the Feast Year were:
- Imbolc, or Oilmeg from 1st February to 30th April
- Beltaine from 1st May to 31st July
- Luguasad from 1st August to 31st October
- and Samhain from 1st November to 31st January.
The fourth celebration, Samhain, marked the beginning of the Celtic year. Although its starting date was 1st November, it was always celebrated on the evening before, and gives rise to Hallowe'en as we now know it.
It seems the Druids, the intellectual caste of the Celts, observed particular magical days which were connected to the Tree Calendar. This type of calendar is extremely old in origin and dates back to about 5000 BC. It was lunar rather than solar and was made up of thirteen 28-day months with an extra day at mid-winter (Winter Solstice - the low point of the Sun). It gets its name through the association of the names of trees with each of the months. As the Moon's period does not constitute 28 days precisely, the extra day in the Solar year means that the calendar months are in phase with the new Moon every twenty-one years, that year being called the Great Lunar Year. 1993 was just such a year, the previous one being 1972.
Not to be confused with the Feast Year, this calendar year was divided into five seasons of seventy two days each, with five dark days added around the time of the Winter Solstice. The Winter Solstice marked the new Year, while the extra day for leap year could be added to make a sixth dark day. The five seasons began on 24th December, 6th March, 17th May, 28th July and 8th October. The five dark days commenced on 19th December.
The Winter Solstice was one of the five extra days of the Tree Calendar and was not observed as a feast, as the day on each side was chosen instead. There were nine Great Days through the year, each of which was celebrated by a week-long festival. These nine days consisted of the five days marking the start of each season together with the four traditional Celtic Feast Days already mentioned.
While the use of the Sun to form the basis of a calendar is particularly relevant due to its creation of the seasons, the continued interest in the cycles of the Moon, which never relate to those of the Sun, is rather more obscure. With the Sun, and through the motion of the Earth, the Moon causes the tides of the oceans. It also has a significant effect on the movement of water in all plant and animal life on the planet, and this is one of the reasons why the Moon has such a deep religious significance. Its cycles were the basis of religious calendars and are still used to establish the date of Easter.
So it is clear that various civilisations had their own calendar systems, some based on cycles of planets in the solar system or on other star systems. It is also clear that these civilisations had a deep knowledge of the Earth’s place in the cosmos and understood the cyclic nature of events in the heavens.
It seems the Druids, the intellectual caste of the Celts, observed particular magical days which were connected to the Tree Calendar. This type of calendar is extremely old in origin and dates back to about 5000 BC. It was lunar rather than solar and was made up of thirteen 28-day months with an extra day at mid-winter (Winter Solstice - the low point of the Sun). It gets its name through the association of the names of trees with each of the months. As the Moon's period does not constitute 28 days precisely, the extra day in the Solar year means that the calendar months are in phase with the new Moon every twenty-one years, that year being called the Great Lunar Year. 1993 was just such a year, the previous one being 1972.
Not to be confused with the Feast Year, this calendar year was divided into five seasons of seventy two days each, with five dark days added around the time of the Winter Solstice. The Winter Solstice marked the new Year, while the extra day for leap year could be added to make a sixth dark day. The five seasons began on 24th December, 6th March, 17th May, 28th July and 8th October. The five dark days commenced on 19th December.
The Winter Solstice was one of the five extra days of the Tree Calendar and was not observed as a feast, as the day on each side was chosen instead. There were nine Great Days through the year, each of which was celebrated by a week-long festival. These nine days consisted of the five days marking the start of each season together with the four traditional Celtic Feast Days already mentioned.
While the use of the Sun to form the basis of a calendar is particularly relevant due to its creation of the seasons, the continued interest in the cycles of the Moon, which never relate to those of the Sun, is rather more obscure. With the Sun, and through the motion of the Earth, the Moon causes the tides of the oceans. It also has a significant effect on the movement of water in all plant and animal life on the planet, and this is one of the reasons why the Moon has such a deep religious significance. Its cycles were the basis of religious calendars and are still used to establish the date of Easter.
So it is clear that various civilisations had their own calendar systems, some based on cycles of planets in the solar system or on other star systems. It is also clear that these civilisations had a deep knowledge of the Earth’s place in the cosmos and understood the cyclic nature of events in the heavens.
Ancient man was therefore not ignorant and was aware of what was happening in the heavens. Then what were the reasons for building the ancient sites in their precise location?
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