How did our calendar came about? Especially Week, Hours, minutes, seconds

[jackyyaplt]

Hi all,

I always ponder over the question on how our calendar was defined.

 

Year is based upon our Earth rotating around the Sun, Month is based upon the Moon, Day is based upon Earth's self-rotation.

 

So, why was Week defined as 7 days?

Why 1 day is define as 24 hours?

Why one hour is define as 60 minutes?

Why one minute is defined as 60 seconds?

 

Any thought and explanation would be greatly appreciated.

 

Regards,

Jacky

 

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

Hi all,

I always ponder over the question on how our calendar was defined.

 

Year is based upon our Earth rotating around the Sun, Month is based upon the Moon, Day is based upon Earth's self-rotation.

 

So, why was Week defined as 7 days?

Why 1 day is define as 24 hours?

Why one hour is define as 60 minutes?

Why one minute is defined as 60 seconds?

 

Any thought and explanation would be greatly appreciated.

 

Regards,

Jacky

 

 

The First one of your questions was i think a Religious Reason.

 

namely THE WEEK . Seven Days

 

This appears in the first book of the Bible Genesis where it says God Created the Heavens and The Earth . It then goes on to talk about the different 6 days making the things on earth , then resting as a Sabbath rest day on the seventh day.

 

Most People and Religions today think these days were not 24 hour days , but rather periods or eons of time . Where each period is day 7000 years or more , A Day being more an eon, period rather than literally 24 hours. This then allows religious people to still follow the Geological time scales found in the rocks , and fossils over the periods of vast timescales.

 

However the division of periods into 7 is of Jewish/Isreal Origin , As far as I know . This then can compose a 7 ( 24 hour day )'s as making a week . Hence the Jews have a 6 day followed by a Sabbath day making a Week 7 Days. I am not a Jew , but I hope I have explained it correctly . The Christian countries of which ( being English of which I am a part ) and other people being English speaking ( American , Canadian , Australian etc ), , carried on the Jewish pattern of 7 day weeks under Christianity . ( I appreciate a lotof people in these countries have given up Christianity, but the nations like England, America, and Australia were founded during Christian thinking times ), hence our week is still referred to its Judao/Christian origin of 7 DAYS .

 

I am not sure who did the DAY, HOUR, MINUTE [ need to think about that ! ]....... possibly Day was Jewish Genesis as well, ....Hour & minute maybe Greek, Roman, Italian , need to think on those .

 

mike

Edited March 28, 2014 by Mike Smith Cosmos

[Prometheus]

Try looking up the Babylonians, they had a base 60 system so might be a good place to start.

[Endy0816]

Yeah, the Babylonian system combined with the base 10 Hindu-Arabic numeral system.

 

If you want historical then it is a mess of different contributions. Hours are mostly the Greeks(horae). Days of the week are mostly in reference to different Nordic and Roman deities. Months, mostly Roman deities and more than a few of their Emperors. The 7 day week is mostly based on religion(Babylonian and Judaism), every 7 days being a holy day. There's a decent degree of crossover between the two hard to say who thought up what exactly. In their version of the Flood, it took 7 days, might have been the basis.

 

Mostly arbitrary though rooted in our apparent motion around the Sun. Insane to think about the amount of observation involved.

 

There are a number of other systems out there as well, if you are interested.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Endy0816

[Ophiolite]

Mike, I think you have it bass-ackwards. Genesis uses a seven day timing because that would already be in place. It's simply the division of the lunar cycle of twenty eight days into four parts. The four parts are well defined by full moon, new moon and the two positions of the terminator on the midline of the moon.

[Janus]

Here's the astronomical explanation for the seven day week, or for at least the naming convention:

 

The Chaldeans used to name the hours of the day after the seven "planets" of the the time in order of what they thought was their decreasing distance from the Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. The names were used 3 full times and then the next three names again to total the 24 hrs in a day. When one day ended the first hour of the next day started with the next name on the list. (If the Last of of the day was Venus, the first hour of the next day was Mercury.) The day itself was named for its first hour. So the order of the days became:

 

Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus.

 

The first three we recognize as becoming Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The others names were replaced with the names of corresponding deities as the practice spread. For example, Mercury was replaced with Wodin, thus Wodin's day becomes Wednesday, and Jupiter's day becomes Thor's day (Thursday).

[John Cuthber]

In some places they kept a different set of the planet based names. So, for example, the French have

Samedi , Dimanche, Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, and Vendredi.