SUMMARY
Our planet in its orbit has 3 natural recurrences, which our calendars formalise by organising the basic unit of the day into larger groups of months and years. Conversely the 3 finer subdivisions of the day - into hours, minutes, seconds - are all purely artificial constructs: they derive from the convenience of certain easily divisible numbers, as first realised in Ancient Egypt and Sumer 5,000 years ago.
Importantly also these mere conventions of measurement, must also exert strong influence, on what one thinks about the greater question of time’s nature overall.
CALENDARS – SUBDIVIDING THE YEAR
Time measurement involves the counting up of events which recur at a regular rate. And for doing so Nature conveniently provides three very obvious natural recurring units in the form of our planetary parameters. Whence our calendars subdivide the longest such natural unit (the year) into smaller natural units of months and days.
So whereas chronology requires the counting of all years into proper sequence, the calendar involves breaking down each year into lesser and more convenient units we can better comprehend.
In addition those 3 primary terrestrial units – day. moonth, year- are reflected in various natural biorhythms (for example sleep) which play a leading role in human biology. So that while the 3 main units of terrestrial recurrence have been formalised by us into calendars, they also continue to exert strong influence on all our experience and thoughts of time.
Other planets like Jupiter or Saturn have of course very different orbital parameters: their days, moonths (of which there may be many different ones), and years are not at all like ours. So that if there were any intelligent creatures living out there, their various biorhythms (sleep, seasons etc.) would have be very different to our own. Whence their temporal experience and resultant time notions would presumably be different as well!
Here on Earth in any case the calendar is just a system for keeping better track of days. By reflecting the other 2 natural recurrences, it enables us to group the basic day unit, into larger parcels of months and years.
However the 29.57-day recurrence of the moon – originally termed a moonth - is much easier to observe and deal with, than the 365.24-day recurrence of the year. The latter is simply too big a number for most people to handle readily.
In prehistory therefore, the evidence shows that calendars based on moon records must have long preceded yearly ones. That the former were familiar at least 15,000 years ago seems proven from several prehistoric artefacts, for example 29-dot patterns inscribed below animals in the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux.
Clear evidence for yearly records only comes much later – perhaps the earliest such clear proof being Ireland’s Newgrange monument. This is a Stone Age construction built over 5,000 years ago, or ca. 3200 BC, to capture the rays of the rising sun on each winter solstice (December 21/22).
And since it’s still working away as intended after 5 millenia, Newgrange is also arguably the world’s oldest scientific instrument!
But In any case moon calendars were the preferred method for keeping track of the days in most early societies. Easy to count up and demarcate, they also performed a useful agricultural function by keeping track of Nature’s annual swings. And because their months are usually named after some local seasonal phenomenon like “the opening of buds or apertures” (whence our April), they are often known as “Nature calendars”.
A Nature or lunar calendar of this type was also used by early Rome from at least 800 BC, but had gradually lapsed out of synchronisation with the seasons and the natural year. So In 46 BC Julius Caesar modified it to form a new solar calendar – essentially the one that we still use today.
Based only on Earth’s annual traverse around the sun, Caesar’s calendar is subdivided into 12 months for everyday operational convenience. Traces of the old Roman lunar calendar survive in the strange way many of our months are still named. But its 12 main divisions further reflect the mathematical conventions of Ancient Egypt and Babylon: there are also 12 signs in the Zodiac because it’s an especially convenient figure easily divisible by 2,3,4,6.
THE WEEK
In contrast to those 3 planetary parameters which determine the boundaries of our calendar, its further subdivision into recurrent weeks of 7 days is a purely artificial construct. Likely there are three facts which have favoured the 7-day week as it evolved from Ancient Rome 2,000 years ago:
Firstly - the early Sumerian/Babylonian astronomers – in the country we now call Iraq - could see only 7 bodies wandering through the heavens - Sun, moon, and the 5 major planets. So 7 became an especially holy or mystical number incorporated into many other contexts – for example the Biblical story that, after creating the Universe in 6 days, God rested on the seventh one!
Secondly- 7 days was a convenient interval between markets in Europe, a span dictated by how long food might keep reasonably fresh in pre-refrigerator days...
Thirdly - 7 divides fairly neatly into that inconvenient lunar cycle of 29.57 days
Other societies however have had different lengths of week. Notably the French Revolutionists of 1789 tried to decimalise time along with the more successful metrication of space. But their new ten-day week soon proved highly unpopular with all classes of society. Not least among them were the workers who now had only one day’s rest in 10, not of one in 7 as before.
Very sensibly therefore Napoleon soon abolished the 10-day week in his Vatican Concordat of 1801. He wanted to please The Pope by bringing back the 7-day week – which also restored Sunday as the traditional religious seventh day of rest!
CHRONOMETRY: SUBDIVIDING THE DAY
As with the week, the 3 smaller units we use for subdividing the day – hours, minutes, seconds - are also all purely artificial constructs. And their lengths or durations are all entirely based on amenable numbers, handed down from antiquity once again.
So the 24-hr. day is again an extension of Ancient Egyptian practice – which originally divided both day and night into 12 equal hours whose length could be quite different.
But 24 is further divisible by 8 and 12, and is therefore even more amenable for dividing down both day and night combined.
Thereafter the 24-hour day went through many vicissitudes – for example those unequal hours of day and night further varied with the seasons – until reaching the total uniformity we have now. Which again just shows how the temporal attitudes of other cultures have often been so very different from our own.
In any case unequal or seasonal hours became impossible when some unknown European monk perfected the mechanical clock around 1280 AD. Obviously the new clocks could only display regular hours of equal length throughout both night and day. Further they usually had only one hand pointing to each hour.
But soon these first clocks attained another hand pointing out 60 smaller or more minute divisions, as it crawled hourly round its circular dial of 360 degrees. And again both these further sexagesimal numbers (i.e. based on 60) had been developed in Babylon around 200 BC. They arose through extension of the old Egyptian use of 12 - being still more readily divisible in any number of ways.
As mechanical clocks became more reliable in the late sixteenth century, time started to impinge more forcibly on peoples’ cultural, scientific and everyday concerns. So a second regular subdivision of the hour became common with the addition of a third clock hand.
And by 1700AD the 1-metre pendulum built into long-case or ‘grandfather’ clocks could beat out an accurate second with the regular tick-tock of each swing. Time concerns thereby began to intrude into everyday life most forcefully.
Later it was realised that clock accuracy relates directly to the frequency with which its ‘pendulum’ of whatever sort will beat. So the standard second is now defined as the time it takes for 9,192,631,779 ‘beats’ of the Cesium-133 atom to recur. The second is also the basic time unit in the Standard International physics system.
Still it’s salutary to remember that the second is an entirely artificial measure of duration, one which divides the natural unit of the day by 24,60,60 because these figures were found to be so convenient in Babylon over 2,000 years ago.
But again as before these measurements by hours minutes, seconds – to say nothing of days, months and years – must also impinge on our temporal attitudes very forcefully. This is a theme further supported by those very different time notions displayed by other societies without our conventions of time measurement.
Finally you can see this more clearly by considering a total opposite. Suppose then that we lived on a non-rotating planet forever perpendicular to its orbit as it circled the sun. In that case there would be no day/night divisions, no seasonal alterations, nor anything to indicate the passing of a year. Time measurements for people there would have to be very different from our own terrestrial system, and so likely engender very different temporal attitudes.
And these are points to be kept in mind when considering the main thrust of this blog: it aims for a fresh look at time in totality - and possibly reconfiguration of the whole problem in some radical new way....
