The Myth of Time

[Music] is [Music] [Music] this is the epitaph of seikelos an ancient greek song dating to the first century a.d it's one of the oldest surviving pieces of music it contains advice on living in the present moment with a limited time that we have on earth i've been exploring how early human cultures understood time and how the first civilizations created methods of communicating this phenomenon a phenomenon that even today we know frighteningly little about from misplaced fears about the mayan calendar to why north korea is currently stuck in year 111 if you've ever wondered where our version of time comes from you're in the right place as we explore the myth of time for most of human history there has been one very basic way of telling the time the day judging on where that floating orb of warmth is or isn't you have a rough idea of what time it is but aside from a steady cycle of seasons there's not much to go on there is some evidence of the first time keepers from our distant past this is the ashango bone it was discovered by a team of archaeologists in the congo central africa on closer inspection they noticed that the bone was covered in tiny notches these markings didn't seem to be placed at random they were arranged into three columns and were sorted into what looked like a tally chart what's more two of the columns added up to the same number sixty at twenty thousand years old many believe that the ashango bone is the oldest calendar in human history perhaps it was used to record different phases of the moon or to track a menstrual cycle or pregnancy but then again others say that they're reading into it a bit too much it could also be a bone with a bunch of scratches and nothing more either way it's left to us to speculate if it is a rudimentary calendar it's one of the earliest attempts at recording the flow of time some of the first recognizable calendars come from mesopotamia roughly 4 000 years ago when these people looked up at the night sky they saw more than just twinkling lights they saw data they recorded the moon's phases a cycle of waxing and waning over 30 days they noted that at various seasons the moon was in different places in the sky tracking its movements they devised the world's first lunar calendar a 12-month year synced up to the orbit and rotation of the moon with the system of time in place they knew when to farm and when to perform rituals to the gods like inanna the goddess of love and warfare you can see her in the night sky most mornings shining brightest as she descends below the horizon you'll probably know her better as the planet venus the morning star the ancient mesopotamians were some of the first to join groups of stars into constellations giving them names like the bull of heaven the goat fish and the great twins today we call these taurus capricorn and gemini they are part of a larger group of star signs that the greeks called little animals or zodiac whilst these early calendars were built around the moon other cultures experimented with its counterpart the sun the emerging civilization of ancient egypt has always been blessed with the nile's regular annual flooding they called it the aquette where the river rhythmically exceeds its banks replenishing the soil with nutrients the egyptians noticed that whenever this happened the star sirius was in the same place in the sky just above the sun at dawn they figured out that if you counted the days until this pattern repeated itself it would arrive at the number 365. they created a solar calendar consisting of 365 days with annual events sinked to the seasons they worshipped the sun as a god ra as he strode across the sky on his sun barge they built obelisks in his name like the great monument of heliopolis the city of the sun the work of these egyptian stargazers would be confirmed thousands of years later when astronomers learned that the planet earth indeed takes 365 days to orbit the sun although technically it's 365.25 days we tend to ignore that 0.25 but that's a quarter of the day six hours in four years you're a day out of sync if you wait 120 years you're a month out of sync to account for this discrepancy the egyptians added an extra month every now and then to make up for lost time in our calendar today we include a leap year an extra day every fourth year these early lunar and solar calendars are only two examples across the world cultures were able to make similar observations with the same startling accuracy ancient china had a combination of the two with their lunar solar calendar featuring their own unique menagerie of zodiac animals vedic india used their calendar to calculate the lifespans of various gods for example a single day for the god brahma is equal to 4.32 billion human years but that's nothing on the god vishnu in the time it takes for him to complete a single breath a lifespan of brahma passes in other words that's 311.04 trillion years the longest single breath in mythological history in time these calendars changed the way people saw themselves you could now say how many years you've been alive for or in which king's reign your parent was born one of the earliest historians was a greek writer called herodotus he traveled around the known world and wrote down all the stories he was told real or fictional there is one event which we know actually took place even down to the very date and time it was a battle between the greek lydians and persian medes which was interrupted by a very strange phenomenon he writes just as the battle was growing warm the day was of a sudden changed into night the medes and lydians when they observed the change ceased fighting and were alike anxious to have terms of peace agreed upon what he had just described was a solar eclipse when the moon passes in front of the sun since the movement of the sun moon are predictable this battle would have occurred on the 28th of may 585 bc making this the first real date in history once again the sun and moon come together to help tell the time for the ancient greeks history was infused with a healthy dose of mythology inhabiting times past are heroic warriors capricious gods and the ordinary people caught in between to the greeks even time was a person the concept was embodied in the titan chronos the father of zeus a cruel tyrant who had a ponchon for eating his own children although he was later imprisoned by zeus and the olympian gods he lives on in time-based words like chronology and synchronized another culture fascinated with the mythology of time were the maya of central america they were prolific astronomers and used three different calendars each with a specific purpose from the hub a 365-day solar calendar for every day goings-on the tolkien a day calendar for ritual events and the long count which stretches way back into mythical history according to the long count this era of creation started on four aha eight kumku to you and me that's monday august the 11th 3114 bc on this day the god tepiu and the feathered serpent gukumats created the land sea and sky using their thoughts alone and made the first humans out of maze later two heroic twins defeat the demon lord sibalba and bring order to the universe contrary to popular belief the mayan calendar does not predict the end of the world there was mass panic that the 21st of december was going to be doomsday of course it wasn't this date in the mayan calendar marked the conclusion of the current era or baktun a unit of time that occurs every 400 years or so instead of a global apocalypse in 2012 the world continued as normal much like it had when the year 1999 rolled on to the year 2000 speaking of this brings us to the calendar we are using today our calendar is an adapted version of the one used by the romans it was tweaked by pope gregory in 1582 to include leap years hence the name the gregorian calendar this calendar counts the years elapsed since the birth of jesus this practice started in the 6th century where christian monks concluded that jesus was probably born 754 years after the founding of rome they refer to this date as the first year of our lord or one ano domino 180 religious historians are nowadays doubtful that jesus was actually born in that year instead they suspect he was born in 4 bc to coincide with the reign of king herod who features heavily in the nativity story another religious calendar you might not have heard of is ano mundi in the year of our world this counts back to the creation of earth in the book of genesis which allegedly took place on the 6th october 3761 bc it's a precise date for the beginning of the universe but i'm not sure scientists would agree with those numbers to this day the gregorian calendar is used pretty much everywhere the exception is north korea whose juche calendar counts on the birth of its first supreme leader kim il-sung like the gregorian calendar north korea's calendar starts with a miraculous birth the story goes that the day kimmel sung was born a bright star appeared in the sky it was accompanied by singing heralding the arrival of the auspicious baby this date is known as juche 1 the same day coincidentally as the sinking of the titanic as the world has become increasingly secular many feel that using a christian calendar is no longer appropriate especially as two-thirds of the world are not even christian some have tried to introduce the holocene calendar a universal calendar marking the rise of modern humans they fixed the state to the end of the last ice age around 10 000 bc so they simply add 10 000 onto our current year it's a nice idea but a bit of a mouthful and i guess all you're doing is adding 10 000 onto a religious calendar whilst our way of counting years is a relic of medieval christianity it's a convention we all use and can agree on it helps our global society stay organized and isn't that the point of a calendar in the first place there is so much more to be said about time from the history of clockmaking to the astronomers who pioneered greenwich meantime to later minds like einstein who proposed his theory of special relativity getting us closer to figuring out what time actually is these developments would not have been possible without the work of ancient astronomers who harnessed the power of the sun moon and stars and created the first systems of time keeping as well as these calendars being achievements in mathematics and astronomy they are also full of stories and rich in mythology these myths live on in today's time keeping our years are based on the biblical nativity story our months come from imperial rome with july and august named after julius caesar and augustus and our weekdays are named after the norse gods thursday is a day of thor friday is the day of freyja to this day the invention of time remains one of humanity's longest lasting achievements these marvelous creations rich in mythology give us a sense of not only when we are but who we are as well hey thanks for watching i've always been fascinated with time and to the mythology that comes with it not only the past but also the future you might like an earlier video of mine past predictions of the future where i explore what the word futuristic has meant to different generations if you like this video and want to see more why not subscribe a like and a comment also go a really long way anyway i look forward to seeing you next time goodbye [Music]

Channel: hochelaga

Views: 382,659

Keywords: myth, time, maya, chronos, mythology, chronology, calendar, gregorian, lunar, solar, herodotus

Id: 9BTRG8slgs4

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022