Hours, days, months, years - a countdown invented by man, a measure of the existence of everything in the universe. Since ancient times, people have divided time into convenient stretches to organize their activities. The calendar is the rhythm to which the life of all mankind obeys.
The ability to count days and months is perhaps one of the first necessary knowledge that every child receives. Any adult understands the concept of a calendar, makes plans, appointing important events for certain days of the year. But not everyone knows the etymology of the word "calendar" and the origins of this, such an imperceptible, but extremely useful and necessary phenomenon in our civilization.
Chronology in the history of different nations
The most ancient calendar, according to scientists, appeared back in 5000 BC, in the culture of nomadic pastoralists of ancient Egypt. They tried to plan their lives in accordance with the spills of the Nile, which at the same time of the year overflowed, and Sirius appeared in the sky at the same time.
This was the starting point for the Egyptians, starting from which, they quite accurately calculated the periods of rains and droughts, carefully marking the seasons on a kind of "calendar circle", which allowed them to "settle down" and acquire some semblance of agriculture.
But even before the Egyptians, many ancient peoples tried to move, hunt and have children in certain seasons, subordinating their lives to the change of day and night, cold and heat, the movement of the sun or moon. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia, for example, were guided by the lunar calendar, in which each month consisted of 29 and a half days, and Ancient Russia used not only the lunar, but also the solar cycle in the calendar, taking into account the change of four seasons.
And it was not quite simple - every 19 years it was necessary to include as much as seven months in a year additionally! At the same time, the Russians already had a week - a week of 7 days. After the Baptism of Rus in 988, priests tried to introduce a Byzantine calendar with a countdown from the "creation of Adam, " but the stubborn Russians did not completely abandon the usual countdown, and the church had to make considerable changes to its calendar. For example, Byzantium celebrated the New Year on September 1, and in Russia it was celebrated on March 1 for a long time.
And only when Ivan III, the Great, ascended the throne, the first of September began to be considered from the beginning of the year 1492. And in 1700, according to the decree of Peter I, the Julian calendar was introduced in Russia, more accurate than the Byzantine one. Then, for the first time, calendars began to be issued in the form of magazines, which they called month-words filled with a variety of historical information, legal advice, news and culinary recipes.
The calendar of Julius Caesar in Russia successfully existed until the proletarian revolution of the early 20th century, after which the modern, Gregorian chronology was introduced in the young Russian Republic.
One of the most famous ancient calendars on Earth is the Chinese calendar of the Shang Dynasty, dated to the 16th century BC. Moreover, it also took into account the movement of both the Sun and the Moon. The first was used exclusively for agriculture, and the second - for other needs. Modern China, of course, uses the generally accepted Gregorian calendar, but does not forget its history - all traditional important days, religious and folk holidays, events of ancient history are celebrated in accordance with the lunar calendar, which counts summer and centuries as in antiquity.
By the way, lovers of Chinese symbolism and astrology should know that the Chinese New Year is also called the Spring Festival and is traditionally celebrated on the second new moon, counting from the winter solstice, that is, between January 21 and February 21.
It is worth mentioning another calendar, which served as a reason for the emergence of a real commotion in 2012. This is the Mayan chronology, in which they calculated the age of the world and the timing of the change of civilization, breaking each year into a sequence of cycles convenient for their religious rites.
The Mayan calendar, more precisely, its next cycle, ends precisely in 2012 (and this is only one of the hypotheses on the correspondence of Mayan dates with the modern calendar concept), and the populists setting out information about the beliefs of the Indians and their calendar have only achieved panic and rumors about the inevitable end of the world in that very unfortunate 2012. But there are similar religious calendars among the Aztecs and Incas. In addition, weekly, monthly and annual cycles exist in almost every ancient culture, from Scandinavian to Australian.
Calendars of various religions and countries
Every religion, every nation acquired its own system of chronology. The Gregorian (which, with minor corrections, people use today) believes that the path of development of mankind dates back more than 7, 500 years from the creation of the world, and in Islamic - humanity is only 1, 400 years old. In the Buddhist calendar, civilization lives in just another era, Nirvana, for more than 2500 years.
The founder of the Bahai religion, who lived in the early 19th century, established his own calendar, perhaps the shortest to date. And it has only about 180 years old. By the way, the Bahai calendar has a rather elegant poetry, the original names of the months. More information about the origin and development of this religion can be found in the corresponding Wikipedia topic.
But in Ethiopia, the Coptic calendar was adopted, and the second millennium for this country came only in 2007. Ethiopia is one of four states that have not switched to the generally accepted Gregorian calendar.
Roman calendar and the appearance of the term
The definition of "Calendar" originated in the time of the Roman Empire, and literally translates as "debt book". The root of this term is the concept of calends. This is every first day of the month when imperial governors collected interest on debts.
At first, the Romans had a year of 304 days and a dozen months, with 61 days not included in any month. This system was introduced by Romulus. Pompilius during his reign added two more months, "februarius" and "Januarius", and subsequent rulers often changed the calendar, sometimes for economic, and sometimes for military purposes.
This chaos ended Julius Caesar. Learning about the Egyptian system for calculating months and seasons, he instructed astronomers to accurately calculate the length of the year. It was then that they considered that the year lasts 365.25 days, and every fourth decided to make it a leap year - a day longer to compensate for the hours remaining after a strict division by 365 days. Such a calendar was the most accurate, and it was called "Julian."
