Time Counting and its History

Many thanks Virginia for sharing this. Islamic calender starts from Adam AS, the first Muslim Khalifatullah. Thus, all calenders referred to a milestone in the lives of the divinely chosen leadership in the past are ISLAMIC calendars. Cheers! Enjoy reading the attached if you have time. Muhammad Mukhtar Alam,Ph.D. Cognitive Clinical Psychologist and Development Professional |Communicating for 7.81 billions united in allegiance to 49th Imam and Fatemi Khalifatullah Mowlana Kareem Shah Al Hussaini post debates on the academic conclusions on the sole thesis on the reference to Lord Ramachandra's vasudhaiv kutumbkum declaration referred in the Congress Manifesto of 1989.| Founders of Mushkil Kusha Mental Health Rehabilitation Private (2016), Abrahimic Quartet/Octet Unity Centre (2020), Movement for Transition to Post Carbon Green India (2008) ,Ecostrategic Communicators for Carbon-Neutral Leisure (2009), Indian Muslim Economic Development Agency (2010) , , Center for Ecological Audit ,Social Inclusion and Governance (2003), Sarva Gunwatta Abhiyan (2017), National Campaign for Nutrition for Dignity (2014), Campaign Againt Child Labour (1995), Campaign Against Child Trafficking ,(2000) International Youth for Humanity (1989) Papers and Presentations at http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam On Sunday, 15 May, 2022, 12:55:36 pm IST, virginiaf.raines <> wrote: 60: Behind Every Second, Millenniums of History - The New ... https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/science/60-behind-every-second-millenniums-of-history.html Jul 8, 2013 — The number of seconds in a minute — and minutes in an hour — comes from the base-60 numeral system of ancient Mesopotamia. 9 Things You May Not Know About the Ancient Sumerians https://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-ancient-sumerians 8. Sumerian mathematics and measurements are still used today. The origins of the sixty-second minute and sixty-minute hour can be traced all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. In the same way that modern mathematics is a decimal system based on the number ten, the Sumerians mainly used a sexigesimal structure that was based around groupings of 60. This easily divisible number system was later adopted by the ancient Babylonians, who used it make astronomical calculations on the lengths of the months and the year. Base-60 eventually fell out of use, but its legacy still lives on in the measurements of the both hour and the minute. Other remnants of the Sumerian sexigesimal system have survived in the form of spatial measurements such as the 360 degrees in a circle and the 12 inches in a foot. Origins of the days of the week | Live Science https://www.livescience.com/45432-days-of-the-week.html May 7, 2014 — The seven-day week originates from the calendar of the Babylonians, which in turn is based on a Sumerian calendar dated to 21st-century B.C. ... A history of time – the story behind our days, weeks, and months https://www.stneotsmuseum.org.uk/articles/a-history-of-time-the-story-behind-our-days-weeks-and-months/ 22 January 2021/in Articles Who do we have to thank for our divisions of time? And how did the days and months get their names? Read on to find out in our brief history of time… We’ve been thinking a lot about time recently. It’d be fair to say that the days, weeks, and months of the past year have lost a little of their definition, with current restrictions causing the passage of time and normal routine to become a little, shall we say, distorted. Time seems more fluid (though, on some days, the speed at which it seems to move feels A LOT slower), and it reminds us that our units of measuring its passing haven’t always been in place… Dividing the days As with many things, we have the ancient Babylonians to thank for our 24-hour days. They were the first to divide both the day and night into 12 equal hours, later separating each hour into 60 minutes and the minutes into 60 seconds. Though these divisions of time were based on the movements of the Sun and Earth, they also had their roots in the Babylonians’ numbering system – and here’s where it gets mathematical! An early counting method using the digits on a single hand Unlike our standard decimal system today based around grouping numbers in ‘10s’, the Babylonians used duodecimal (base 12) and sexagesimal (base 60) numeral systems – systems that were in fact started by the Sumerians, a culture that began 2,000 years before the Babylonians, in around 4000BCE. It’s believed the system likely originated from ancient peoples using their thumbs as a pointer, and counting by using the three jointed parts on the other four fingers (try it yourself!) It was pretty logical, then, for them to divide their time using this same mathematical system. (If you want to fall down the rabbit-hole of information on this, here’s a pretty good starting point!) Days become weeks, weeks become months… When it comes to the number of days in a week, and weeks in a month, it seems we have the Babylonians to thank again. For them, the number ‘7’ held a particular significance, observing as keen astronomers, that there were seven celestial bodies in sky – the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Through their lunar calendar, which tracked the transitional phases of the moon, they also calculated that it took approximately 28 or 29 days for the moon to complete its full lunar cycle. This period (give or take a few ‘transitional’ days) became a ‘month’, and, divided into four equal parts, produced seven-day ‘weeks’. Fragment of a Babylonian celestial calendar Though other great civilizations chose to divide their weeks slightly differently – the Egyptians’ week was 10 days long and the Romans’ originally lasted for eight – it was the Babylonians’ system, born from such an influential culture, that lasted, spreading quickly through the neighbouring large empires of Persia and Greece. (N.B. How the modern year came to be divided into 12 months is a more complex story, and the subject of another blog entirely! Later we’ll see that originally, the Romans chose to divide their calendar into 10 months, before necessity caused them to swap to 12) It’s all in the name So that’s the maths out the way, now what about the origins of the names we now use for the days and months? Unsurprisingly, the names have their roots in astronomy and the deities that were once associated with the planets. It was our old friends the Babylonians once again who set the trend, naming each day after the celestial body they believed held sway over the first hour of that day. But it’s the Romans’ adaptation of the idea which led to the days and months being named as we know them today. History of time - Sol gives his name to Sunday Mosaic fragment of Sol Invictus In the ‘romance languages’, like Italian and French, the days of the week have predominantly remained very close to their original Latin forebears. If we take the Italian, starting with our equivalent of ‘Monday’: Dies Lunae, the day of the moon, became Lunedi, combining lunae (moon) and di (day); Dies Martis, the day of Mars, became Martedi; Dies Mercurii, the day of Mercury, became Mercoledi; Dies Jovis, the day of Jupiter, became Giovedi; and Dies Veneris, the day of Venus, became Venerdi. Interestingly, Dies Saturni, day of Saturn, and Dies Solis, day of the Sun, are not the root for the modern Italian sabato (Saturday) and domenica (Sunday), though they clearly influence our English versions. Instead, the pagan names for these days were replaced and influenced by the Hebrew Sabbath, day of rest, and the Latin Dominus dies, day of the Lord. Germanic adaptations History of time - Tyr and Tuesday Tyr equated with Mars in an 18thC Icelandic Manuscript (ÍB 299 4) As for our English words for the days, we’ve seen they bear traces of the Roman, but it’s a connection that’s been heavily filtered through centuries of Norse and Anglo-Saxon influences. Like the Romans before them, Germanic people also adopted the system of identifying the days with deities, this time simply replacing the Roman gods with the names of their own. Monday derives from the Old English Mōnandæg and Norse Mandag, associated with Mani the Norse goddess of the Moon; Tuesday is associated with the Norse god Tyr, a warrior god like Mars, whose name in Old English gave us Tīwesdæg; Wednesday derives from Odin’s or Wōdensdæg, like the Roman god Mercury, Odin (Anglo-Saxon Wōden) played a part in guiding souls to the realms of the dead; Thor gave his name to Torsdæg or Thursday, sharing Jupiter’s association with the sky and thunder; Frigg, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of love, gives her name to Frīgedæg or Friday; strangely, Saturday retained its Roman deity, becoming Sæturnesdæg in Old English; and finally Sunday comes from the Old English Sunnandæg, deriving from the Norse sun goddess Sunna or Sól. As for the months… History of time - Januarius January from the print series ‘The Months’ by Jacobus Harrewyn. Engraving, 1698. Held in the collection of The British Museum The months are brought to us by the Romans again, who followed a similar naming method to the days to begin with, before, it seems, losing their creative flair as they approached the end of the year. Originally the Roman calendar began with March or Martius, named for one of their favourite deities Mars. Aprilis came next, named from the Latin word aperire, meaning ‘to open’, and sacred to goddess Venus. Maius (May) and Junius (June) were named for the goddesses Maia (a deity of springtime and growth) and Juno (the goddess of marriage and childbirth). When we reach July and August though, the calendar gets a reshuffle… As we mentioned above, originally the Roman calendar (borrowed from the Greeks) had only 10 months, and as the fifth and sixth months of the year, July and August were once known as Quintilis and Sextilis. However, under the authority of Julius Caesar in 46BCE, two additional months were added to the year, in order to better synchronise the year with the seasons and tie in with the 12 lunar cycles of the moon. These were Januarius, named after the Roman god Janus (god of doors and beginnings) and Februarius, named after an ancient festival of purification known as Februa. At first, these two months formed the end of the year, but were later moved to the beginning (which explains the odd positioning of the leap year in the modern calendar). Quintilis and Sextilis, now out of order in the calendar, were renamed Julius (July) after Caesar himself, and Augustus (you guessed it, August) after his great-nephew and Rome’s first emperor Augustus. History of time - Roman Maias Maias from a Roman mosaic of the months (from El Djem, Tunisia, first half of 3rd century AD) Picture Credit: Ad Meskens And as for the rest of the months? Well, here’s where the creativity runs out. September, October, November and December are also named after the Roman numbers 7 (septem), 8 (octo), 9 (novem) and 10 (decem). After January and February were moved to the beginning of the year, these too were placed out of order numerically. Though later emperors had a go at changing the names of the months (Caligula insisted that September be renamed Germanicus, after his father, and Nero had a go at renaming April Neronium), unsurprisingly, none of these stuck, and so the original names were kept. So, if, like us, you’re struggling with the slow passage of time and uncertainties of the year ahead, take comfort in the knowledge that January, though it may be a bleak time of year, is named for the god of gateways and new beginnings. Time will pass, and whether you’re counting in days, weeks or months, lockdown too will pass.