subject: The History Of The Calendar [print this page] The movements of the earth, moon and sun schedule our lives, and from these movements a calendar is created as a way to offer structure and organisation to society. As humans gain in understanding the format of the calendar has developed, meaning the calendar has history dating back numerous years.
The universally accepted calendar nowadays would be the Gregorian calendar. This has been widely used for hundreds of years, and in todays world we count a lot on physical formations in the calendar to be able to arrange our lives. Many calendar companies even supply personalised calendars or personalised diaries. But all of these calendars will comply with the organisation outlined within the Gregorian calendar with regards to the months of the year, a personalised calendar simply adds a personal touch when people organise their lives by the calendar months.
The Gregorian calendar that we abide by was named after its founder, Pope Gregory XIII, and came into use in 1582. The Gregorian calendar isn't that far removed from the Julian calendar, its predecessor started by Julius Caesar in 46BC.
Prior to the Julian calendar, much of the earth lived by the Roman calendar. The Roman calendar draws on lunar phases (the phases of the moon), which is still seen today in several forms, by a small number of nations. The Islamic, or Hijri calendar, always includes twelve lunar months, however the Chinese, Hebrew, and Hindu lunar calendars are a little different; because a year cannot be divided up equally into a precise amount of lunar phases, every two or three years their is a thirteenth month.
There was lots of superstition based around the calendar months in Roman times. The months in the Roman calendar were made of either 29 or 30 days. 29-day months were known as hollow months, whilst 30-day months were called full months. Full months were regarded as being powerful and prosperous, whilst hollow months were considered to be unlucky. Nearly all of this superstition has now been lost, any left is normally around Friday the 13th, luckily this won't come round any more than twice in any full calendar . If we still shared the Roman superstitions, then having personalised calendars or personalised diaries could well be thought to be a bad omen, and the items would most likely not be in everyday living.
The Gregorian calendar was first launched 4 October 1582, this date became 15 October. This was the strategy used in an effort to correct how the Julian calendar had handled leap years. The Julian calendar simply contained a leap year, one in every four, which will be translated to imply the calendar year averaged 365.25 days. The real calendar year is actually about 365.242189 days, and this discrepancy induced an error of around 0.75 days each century. In the Gregorian calendar we have a leap year every four years, except that every hundred years we dont have one, then every 400 years we do.
When we moved from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar we lost ten days, but in reality this ought to have already been twelve. Which means that our current calendar continues to have a mistake of three days every 10,000 years, and therefore another change to our calendar system could eventually need to be made.
For some nations, following the introduction of the Gregorian calendar some persisted to use the Julian calendar and it was 1918 that it finally disappeared from use. Whilst Catholic nations switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar promptly, it took Protestants significantly longer. It was the USSR who finally changed in 1918, over 300 years after the calendar was initially introduced.
The processes to map time has evolved considerably over time, people began by making use of sundials and water clocks to track time, now people use personalised calendars and personalised diaries . Despite the changes throughout the years the calendar in use today continues to be technically inaccurate. The history of the calendar isn't over and only time will tell if we are to observe more changes.
