Calendars Around the World

calendars are something that we all use in our daily lives and are an essential part of a functioning Society while modern calendars on your smartphone are a fairly recent Innovation calendars themselves have been around since ancient times first used more than 3,000 years ago there have been hundreds of calendars throughout history with many of these still in use even to this day however the calendar that is by far the most widely used and probably the one most of us know is the Gregorian calendar developed in 1582 named after Pope Gregory's the 13th the Gregorian calendar is actually almost identical to the previously used Julian calendar and use since Roman times the only difference is the way in which the calendar deal with leap years the Julian calendar had a leap year every four years because the time it takes the earth to revolve around the Sun is 365 and a/4 days so with 3 years of 365 days and one with 366 this averages out to 365.25 days over a 4year cycle problem solved unfortunately a solar year is actually 365.2420 days this minor difference may seem insignificant but over the course of hundreds of years it becomes significant the Julian calendar had slowly fallen out of SN with the Earth's movement around the Sun the problem here is that in the Christian year Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the March Equinox however by 1582 the calendar had diverged from when the rule was established to ensure that Easter would always be celebrated at the same time of year as it historically had Pope Gregory adjusted the rule for which years are leap years as with the Julian calendar a leap year would happen every 4 years except for years that are divisible by 100 except except years that are also divisible by 400 so for example the years 1800 and 1900 were not late PE but 2000 was the Julian calendar drifted by 11 minutes per year or one day every 128 years the Gregorian calendar drifts just 27 seconds per year accurate to one day in 3,200 years of course to account for the difference in time that had already been accumulated the Gregorian calendar was established already offset by 10 days from the Julian calendar to get back into sync countries that have adopted the new calendar have had to skip forward for the difference in days not all countries did this initially it was actually another 170 years before the British Empire and their colonies adopted the new calendar by this time 11 days out of syn even later it was the 20th century before Russia and Turkey switched both having to move forward 13 days now there was one country Sweden that didn't want the major inconvenience of jumping forward disrupting monthly salaries Rand and so on so instead decided to skip ahead gradually this would be achieved by Ting the 11 leap days from 1700 to 1740 bringing them in line with the Gregorian calendar and the other countries using it it was a good plan and it would have worked but things didn't turn out that way after dropping the First Leap Day in February 1700 distractions of War caused the plan to be abandoned and the year 1704 and 1708 were leap years this caused Sweden to be out of sync with both calendars one day ahead of the Julian but still 10 days behind the Gregorian to fix this in 1712 Sweden had a double leap year adding not only February 29th but also February 30th Sweden eventually switched to the Gregorian calendar the normal way skipping ahead 11 days in 1753 now these calendars are examples of solar calendars they're based on the sun however some calendars also take the moon's movement around the earth into account these are known as Looney solar calendars probably the best known example of this is the Chinese calendar while the Gregorian calendar is used in China for several purposes the traditional calendar is still used for determining Chinese festivals and celebrations for example the Chinese New Year takes place on the second or third New Moon after the winter solstice therefore both the Sun and Moon must be used to figure out the date the calendar has 12 months of 29 or 30 days alternating month to month month this is because a lunar month is approximately 29 and 1/2 days long months begin with a new moon when the moon is at its darkest beginning its lunar phases over again of course this only adds up to 354 days much too short for a solar year to also stay in sync with the Sun the Chinese calendar also has leap years but instead of having a leap day it has a leap month in which one of the month of the year will be repeated and this can be any month there's a complex method of determining when a leap month should be added which I won't go into but the next leap month will begin on the 23rd of May 2020 in which the fourth month of the calendar will be repeated now what the Chinese calendar is probably most famous for is the 12 animals of the zodiac every year is assigned one of these animals and follows this list in order from year to year for example at the time of uploading this video we're coming to the end of the year of the pig January 25th 2020 will Mark the beginning of the year of the Rat as the 12E cycle starts over again a person born in a given year becomes associated with the animal of that year for example if you were born in 1992 after February 3rd then you would be a monkey if you were born in the following year you'd be a rooster these animals are not thought of as arbitrary in Chinese culture far from it in fact millions of people place great importance on the animals of the zodiac often major life decisions such as getting married having children starting a business Etc can be in influenced by the animal of a particular year some animals are viewed as better than others unsurprisingly given Chinese art and culture the dragon is considered the best if you are born between any of the following dates then congratulations you're a dragon noticeable population spikes happen every 12 years in China as parents want their kids to be born dragons conversely the worst animal is considered to be the goat so much so that there were actually reports in January 25th of a surge in C-sections as pregnant Chinese women raised to have their baby before the year of the goat began in February if you're born between any of these dates you're a goat I wouldn't worry too much though Bill Gates is a goat and he seems to be doing all right from himself now these zodiac animals are known as the 12 Earthly branches these run concurrently with what are known as the 10 Heavenly stems comprised of two parts five elements wood fire earth metal water and either Yin or Yang so as well as an animal years are also assigned one of the Heavenly stems these 12 and 10e Cycles are used in combination to form a sexagenary cycle a cycle of 60 years I.E how long it takes before the years repeat the current year is G High Yen Earth year of the pig this is year number 36 in the current cycle which began way back in 1984 and will finish in 2044 [Music] another Looney solar calendar is the Hebrew calendar we're currently in the year 5780 effectively dating from what was established to be the creation of the world like the Chinese calendar this one also has 12 lunar months with a 13th leap month added to keep up with the Sun the calendar actually has two different New Years the new year for the several agricultural year occurs on the first of tiry which is actually one of the the most important Jewish holidays rash hasana biblically though the first of Nissan is described as the new year but this is only observed by a handful of Jewish communities these usually occur on September and March respectively what's peculiar about this calendar is that days don't start at the same fixed time every day the beginning of a day is actually at sunset this is based on interpretations from The Book of Genesis there was evening and there was morning one day these last two calendars Incorporated a lunar element but they were still tied to the sun overall however the Islamic calendar aka the hedri calendar is purely based on the moon a lunar calendar it has 12 lunar months of 29 or 30 days but with no leap months since it doesn't stay in line with the Sun as with the Loney solar calendars months begin at the new moon which is based on actual observation of the so-called waxing cresant as it is known in astronomy one of these months has particular significance in Islam and that is the ninth month Ramadan which you've probably heard of this is when Muslims around the world fast from sunrise to sunset abstaining from eating and drinking during daylight hours this is one of the five pillars of Islam what's interesting is that because the calendar is entirely lunar based and only has 354 days the date at which Ramadan starts changes from one year to the next next moving backwards every year in relation to the Gregorian calendar so this means that fasting will have varying degrees of difficulty depending on the seasons in which Ramadan happens to fall in a given year while the difference is somewhat negligible in Mecca Muslims living further from the equator we'll see a much more pronounced difference with days being shorter in winter but longer in summer for example just a few years ago Ramadan took place in June and for those living in say northern Europe the sun can be out for more than 16 hours per day even 18 in some places this would make fasting incredibly challenging on the flip side of course fasting is much easier in the winter when the days are at their shortest when the sun sets in the midafternoon now the Mayan calendar is an interesting one the Meer were a pre-colombian civilization from meso America and their calendar is among the oldest in existence it's actually more of a calendar system comprised of two separate parts the zulin and the hab the zulin is for keeping track of days each day is assigned a name and a number there are 20 day names and they're numbered from 1 to 13 this creates a cycle of 260 days until all combinations of names and numbers have been made and the cycle starts over again the other part called the hab is made up of 18 months of 20 days plus a random find extra days at the end of the year which are supposedly unlucky although oddly dates in a month are given from 0 to 19 this totals 365 days but with no leap here it does not stay in sync with the sun if that was the intention if we combine the Zulan and the hab together we get the day and the date for example the 1st of January 2020 would be 10 manic 15th of cankan and the days following would therefore be as such these Day date combinations are unique in the short term taking another 52 years before being repeated this is the length of the entire cycle of both the Zulan and the hab one completion of this whole cycle is called a calendar round but how did the Maya keep track of years over very long periods of time like centuries and Millennia this is where we use the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar this numerical calendar keeps track of years months and in days P since the supposed creation of the world roughly 4,000 years ago the Mayan word for a day was Ken 20 of these Ken are known as a wnel 18 wnel make a tune 20 of these a catun and 20 of these a back tune and so on that last one though is important as this is what led some people to believe the world was going to end in 2012 December 21st to be exact as this was the day in which the 13th back tune came to an end given the Superstition around the number 13 which also had significance in Mayan culture too some had interpreted this to mean the Maya had predicted the end of time in reality of course it was just the beginning of the 14th back tune and the Long Count calendar continued this normal given that a back tune is a near 400e cycle the date certainly had significance but was likely caused for celebration rather than any kind of Doomsday Panic it could perhaps be thought of as somewhat comparable to the whole Y2K Fiasco some hysteria and confusion but ultimately it was just an arbitrary date invented by humans with no real meaning to the universe itself

Channel: WonderWhy

Views: 307,189

Keywords: calendars, gregorian, julian, maya, chinese, chinese calendar, year of the rat, islamic calendar, hijri calendar

Id: REvKJmvuAEc

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019