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The Ridiculous Origin of the Modern Calendar · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. We are recording this on July
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Speaker 1: thirty first, which is a Thursday. And July and the
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Speaker 1: concept of Thursdays are just things that got made up
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Speaker 1: at some point.
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Speaker 2: It's true. It's sort of like money. We just agree
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Speaker 2: that it makes sense. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Oh, and that's a good story for both this show
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Speaker 1: and stuff they don't want you to know our sister podcast,
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Speaker 1: Let's welcome to the stage. Of course, big thanks to
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Speaker 1: our super producer mister Max Williams, as well as the
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Speaker 1: one and only mister Noel Brown.
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Speaker 2: It's about time. I get it. It is about time.
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Speaker 3: I was just making a poorly placed time reference because that's.
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Speaker 2: What we're talking about. The timing was great.
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Speaker 1: They called me Ben Bullen and folks, as you may
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Speaker 1: tell from today's banter at the top. Uh, we looked
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Speaker 1: around and we had the conversation many months ago. Uh
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Speaker 1: that that kind of sprang out of earlier conversations on
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Speaker 1: different shows. The calendar. Why why is it a thing?
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Speaker 1: It's imperfect? We looked at it in a leap Yer
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Speaker 1: episode previously leaps here.
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Speaker 2: Still can't wrap my head around the.
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Speaker 1: Right exactly if you say so max, if you say approximately.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, approximate.
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Speaker 2: I know.
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Speaker 4: I told you a lot, Noel and your I still
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Speaker 4: don't get them, Like yeah, I'm just gonna keep saying
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Speaker 4: it that way just to compound the issue.
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Speaker 1: Approximate, because look, the calendar, like liked all the attempts
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Speaker 1: to map Earth on a two dimensional surface, like the
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Speaker 1: Mercader projection and everything. The calendar is an approximation for
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Speaker 1: human convenience. I think that's the best way to put it.
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Speaker 3: It's a functional one, though, because I think we all
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Speaker 3: do agree or accept the need to have some kind
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Speaker 3: of continuity in terms of measuring time, you know, just
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Speaker 3: for like keeping appointments and stuff like catching trains.
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Speaker 1: Right right, for civilization to exist, we have to agree
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Speaker 1: on some things, even if we all know they are
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Speaker 1: arbitrary things. That's the reason why you're never going to
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Speaker 1: be in a conversation and say, you know, well, Ambassador,
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Speaker 1: we said we would have the plan by Wednesday. You're
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Speaker 1: never going to hear the ambassador say I fundamentally reject
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Speaker 1: your concept of Wednesday.
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Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, And it also called back to an episode
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Speaker 3: we did in the not too distant past about weights
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Speaker 3: and measures.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, oh, that one got so weird so quickly.
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Speaker 1: No matter who you are, where you're at in life,
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Speaker 1: or where you're at on the planet, you're going to
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Speaker 1: have the same day as everyone else. The sun is
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Speaker 1: going to rise, it's going to set the evening. We've
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Speaker 1: got a cycle for this. Ancient history has figured out
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Speaker 1: the passage of the heavens to a great degree, and
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Speaker 1: we have to know how to measure business, domestic and
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Speaker 1: agricultural affairs. The calendar helps us coordinate. That's probably the
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Speaker 1: most important part of the thing, for sure.
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Speaker 3: And like many things in history, the version of all
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Speaker 3: of this that ends up having the most stickiness usually
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Speaker 3: results from some sort of powerful entity, your political figure, ruler,
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Speaker 3: godlike character, who in a burst of humility, named the
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Speaker 3: thing after themselves.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, way to go, greg The first practical calendar
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Speaker 1: that we know about came from Egyptian civilization, and the
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Speaker 1: Romans came back and developed that into the Julian calendar,
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Speaker 1: and that was around Western Europe for a long long time,
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Speaker 1: like fifteen hundred years or so, and then the Gregorian
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Speaker 1: calendar is an improvement upon that, and ever since the
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Speaker 1: rollout and adoption of the Gregorian calendar that became the
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Speaker 1: gold standard, is the best way to put it. Other
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Speaker 1: calendars exist, which will probably explore in a future episode,
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Speaker 1: but this one, for one reason or another, became the
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Speaker 1: calendar that all the world, with all its many differences,
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Speaker 1: agreed to hold, right, we all agreed to practice this one.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean, you know, to your point bent.
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Speaker 3: Other calendars might do a better job of tracking the
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Speaker 3: movement of celestial bodies, but the one that gets agreed
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Speaker 3: upon is important because of the very fact that it
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Speaker 3: is the one that gets agreed upon right widely. So
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Speaker 3: not necessarily the most accurate, quote unquote one, but it
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Speaker 3: is kind of the one that most folks landed on.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, with or without their own consent.
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Speaker 1: Right when you get born in a modern hospital, your
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Speaker 1: parents don't get a worksheet that allows them to check
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Speaker 1: which calendar is the one that applies to you. You
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Speaker 1: can't have opten things like calendars specializing in the cycles
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Speaker 1: of the moon. That's very important in several religious and
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Speaker 1: spiritual belief systems. Before we get to the whole calendar,
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Speaker 1: we're talking about this before we have to look into
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Speaker 1: how measuring time became a thing, because you know, I
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Speaker 1: always thought about it. It's so strange that the full
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Speaker 1: week everybody practices is seven days. Why isn't it five?
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Speaker 1: Why isn't it ted right? Why isn't something you could
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Speaker 1: easily count on one or both hands?
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Speaker 5: Lucky number seven? I'll be I. Yeah, maybe he knows
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Speaker 5: that seven is the best number. I hope that's how
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Speaker 5: the meeting went.
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Speaker 1: I hope a bunch of agent Boffin's got together and
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Speaker 1: they said, okay, we've got to figure out what time
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Speaker 1: it is. And they eventually said, okay, now we have
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Speaker 1: to figure out days.
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Speaker 3: What's a good I love that David Fincher Murder movie.
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Speaker 2: We'll name it after that, right exactly? Yes? Uh.
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Speaker 1: The basic unit of computation in a there is, of course,
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Speaker 1: the day. Days are currently measured from midnight to midnight.
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Speaker 1: This obviously wasn't always the case. From about the second
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Speaker 1: century CE until all the way up to nineteen twenty five,
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Speaker 1: days were counted from noon to noon instead of midnight
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Speaker 1: to midnight.
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Speaker 3: Right, And if we're going a little bit more primitive,
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Speaker 3: they tribal folks, indigenous folks measured from dawn to dawn
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Speaker 3: because they were much more mourning people apparently.
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Speaker 1: And later Babylonian civilization practicers of Judaism. People in Greek civilization,
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Speaker 1: they would count a day from sunset to sunset, and
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Speaker 1: then if you go to Hindu civilization or the Egyptians,
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Speaker 1: they would say the day begins at dawn. And then
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Speaker 1: if you went over to the Romans, they would say,
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Speaker 1: you guys are crazy. The day obviously starts at midnight.
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Speaker 3: Not to mention the Tutons, whoever the hell they were.
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Speaker 3: They are apparently a people who lived in the fourth
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Speaker 3: century BC and fought the Romans in France.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, which is where we get the phrase Teutonic
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Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So they counted by knights and
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Speaker 1: for a lot of us, the most a lot of
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Speaker 1: us here in the US know about the Teutons is
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Speaker 1: that they're the reason we group fourteen days into something
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Speaker 1: called a fortnite.
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Speaker 3: Quick question, pop cultural question. Why is Fortnite called Fortnite?
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Speaker 3: What does it have to do with anything to do
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Speaker 3: with a Fortnite the game?
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Speaker 1: They want you to play it for more than two.
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Speaker 2: Weeks in in one sitting.
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Speaker 3: Perhaps, Yes, it's also a bit of a play on words,
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Speaker 3: because I believe it involves fortifying yourself into a bit
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Speaker 3: of a.
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Speaker 1: Fort, making a fort at night, I guess little. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: who were we to say? Wildly popular? Who are we
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Speaker 1: to say about this wildly popular game? If it sticks
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Speaker 1: around long enough, we can do an episode of ridiculous
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Speaker 1: history about it.
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Speaker 2: Now.
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Speaker 1: Another thing that baffles a lot of people, or it's
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Speaker 1: something we've all accepted as normal, is the division of
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Speaker 1: hours in the day. So we have twenty four seasonal
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Speaker 1: hours in every day. Twelve of those hours are largely
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Speaker 1: considered the daytime hours. Twelve are darkness hours, and that
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Speaker 1: gets hilariously incorrect when you live at the poles right,
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Speaker 1: or you live in an extreme northern or southern part
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Speaker 1: of the world where the sun can stay up, you know,
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Speaker 1: for days and days at a time.
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Speaker 3: And this tended to be the practice of the Sumerians,
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Speaker 3: the ancient Greeks, and the Babylonians, as well as the Egyptians,
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Speaker 3: passing on to the Romans and all of Western civilization
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Speaker 3: as we know it. Christendom, which is a term that
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Speaker 3: I love throwing around. It's got a nice mouth feel
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Speaker 3: to it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and Christendom had its own canonical system of hours
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Speaker 1: for daily worship. They had seven, being the church or
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Speaker 1: the you know, society part of Echelon's society governed by
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Speaker 1: the church. Yeah, the decision makers in the church said,
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Speaker 1: we got our own hours. There are seven of these,
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Speaker 1: and they're you know, they're according to a prayer schedule, right,
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Speaker 1: daily worship. But in secular affairs getting along with people
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Speaker 1: outside of that rarefied air, everyone started agree and you
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Speaker 1: needed twenty four hours in a day.
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Speaker 2: That's how we're going to count it. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: If that seven hour day thing doesn't compute to you,
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Speaker 3: it's for good reason.
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Speaker 2: It didn't really last. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: You know, we've all we've all heard some phrases that
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Speaker 1: come from that, like vespers.
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Speaker 2: Oh no, I don't know about that.
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Speaker 1: Tell me, well, vespers is one of those seven hours
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Speaker 1: that christiandom would have had as the canonical daily worship.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I think, not to make us sound like dirt bags,
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Speaker 1: but I think we both associated with a cocktail instead.
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Speaker 2: Yep.
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Speaker 3: I was just about to say, I just know it
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Speaker 3: is the Martini preference of James Theodore Bond.
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Speaker 1: What's the difference is of So a vesper is a
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Speaker 1: kind of Martini, right, it's.
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Speaker 2: A kind of Martini.
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Speaker 3: It involves the apartif lelais, which is like a fortified wine,
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Speaker 3: I believe, and a lemon.
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Speaker 1: Twist fortified wine. I think that's right, Okay, I just
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Speaker 1: I often associate fortified wine with things like the not
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Speaker 1: great wines of the world.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I'm wrong about that. It is just considered
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Speaker 2: a French apartif.
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Speaker 4: Jumping in here real quick. I love telling stories about
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Speaker 4: fortified wines because in many ways a fortified wine could
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Speaker 4: be really good or really bad. Like often the history
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Speaker 4: behind them was England and France would be at war,
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Speaker 4: so England was either wine from Portugal, but they hated
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Speaker 4: port wine so much that they would fortify in like
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Speaker 4: old brandy barrels. But you could have really good and
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Speaker 4: really bad port wines. They're often a dessert wine.
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Speaker 2: You have a little life. Yeah. Lay is a fortified
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Speaker 2: wine of a sort.
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Speaker 3: It's aged in oak barrels, and it is a blend
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Speaker 3: of Bordeaux wines.
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Speaker 1: I love a blend. I just like saying I love
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Speaker 1: a blend.
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Speaker 2: I don't know a good blend, do you? Guys like
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Speaker 2: a blend?
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Speaker 3: Sometimes blends are trash though, like the they sell it
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Speaker 3: trader Joe's the what is it? The Tuo buck Chuck,
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Speaker 3: I believe is a notoriously awful blend.
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Speaker 4: Well, I mean you have like stuff like marriages, which
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Speaker 4: is a term often used in talking about rye and stuff,
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Speaker 4: married two girls. But you can't do a marriage with bourbon,
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Speaker 4: because once it's in the barrel, it's in the barrel.
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Speaker 4: You can only add water.
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Speaker 1: I just love a say and I love a blend.
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Speaker 1: But we should get into the history of fortified God.
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Speaker 1: That is going to come back to haunt us. I
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Speaker 1: swear one of us is going to prank the other
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Speaker 1: one with that later. I don't know if it'll be
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Speaker 1: on air or in real life, and I don't know
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Speaker 1: what day it will occur on, but I know it'll
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Speaker 1: be one of seven days, because that's what we've been doing.
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Speaker 2: For a while.
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Speaker 1: And do you ever think about again, just how weird
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Speaker 1: it is not only that there are seven days instead
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Speaker 1: of five or ten in a week, but also the
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Speaker 1: names that we gave them.
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Speaker 2: I mean, at least they all talk about a blend.
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Speaker 2: Talking about a blend. We'll kick it to us.
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Speaker 1: Where did these come from?
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Speaker 3: Well, they were named after the planets of Hellenistic astrology
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Speaker 3: in the order of Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus,
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Speaker 3: and Saturn. The Romance language is preserved the Latin translations
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Speaker 3: of those, except to the blend point of Sunday, which
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Speaker 3: was replaced by Dominicus, which is the Lord's day, and
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Speaker 3: of course also Saturday, which was named for the Sabbath.
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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, and our research and associate Jeff here
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Speaker 1: indicated that he wanted to stick with the English names
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Speaker 1: at the beginning when we learn more about the days
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Speaker 1: of the week, right, we do have to mention that
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Speaker 1: most of the Romance languages are still latin Esque and
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Speaker 1: based on those Roman gods and based on you know,
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Speaker 1: therefore some of the astrology that you had just mentioned earlier, Noel.
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Speaker 1: But like you were saying, Nol, we have to remember
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Speaker 1: that a lot of these names have earlier forms. As
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Speaker 1: a matter of fact, all of them have earlier forms
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Speaker 1: based on astrology, religion, and deification of various entities. The
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Speaker 1: Germanic people got into this system by substituting German deities
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Speaker 1: for Roman ones, with the exception of Saturday. And this
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Speaker 1: this kind of religious secretism happened often enough that it
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Speaker 1: has a phrase interpretatio Germanica cool.
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Speaker 2: Or Germanic interpretation. Right.
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Speaker 3: Uh, so why don't we go through yeah, one at
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Speaker 3: a time. These are the days of the week. Uh, Sunday,
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Speaker 3: which is always blows my mind. Uh, maybe not blows
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Speaker 3: my mind, but I'm always have to remind myself that
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Speaker 3: it's technically the first day of the week.
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Speaker 1: It always feels like the end. Yeah, right, exactly because
15:29
Speaker 1: out in the Middle East, you know, Uh, in other
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Speaker 1: parts of the world, the weekend will differ, or what
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Speaker 1: that two day period is will differ.
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Speaker 4: Working in restaurants for super long uh. A lot of
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Speaker 4: Hispanic uh Hispanic people, Sunday is the last day of
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Speaker 4: the week. So you used to looking at calendars or
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Speaker 4: Monday as it's starting. Like at our at our job,
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Speaker 4: we at one point try to change the front of
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Speaker 4: house schedule to being Monday through Sunday, and everyone got
15:52
Speaker 4: so mad at us about it. But it's like, I like,
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Speaker 4: like it was annoying because we had one schedule it
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Speaker 4: was Monday through Sunday, and we had other schedules Sunday
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Speaker 4: through Saturday.
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Speaker 3: It speaks to the whole need for that kind of uniformity.
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Speaker 3: So starting with Sunday is the first day of the week.
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Speaker 3: If we're going since we find ourselves here in America,
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Speaker 3: the Old English would be sun and dyke or sun
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Speaker 3: and dyke, which means Sun's day and the translation of
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Speaker 3: the Latin phrase ds solace.
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Speaker 1: And for a lot of us, if you just read
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Speaker 1: that typed out you would think it said dies soulness,
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Speaker 1: which is a pretty cool super heavy metal hominem there
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Speaker 1: big time. So the next one Monday, Old English monondayg
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Speaker 1: meaning moonsday. So you got the Sun's day, You got
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Speaker 1: the moon's day, Dies Luna or of course Dias. In
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Speaker 1: North Germanic mythology, the moon is personified as mommy, ah
16:51
Speaker 1: many love that guy.
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Speaker 2: Tuesday. Of course, we've got t weeesday Tuesday.
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Speaker 3: Now we're getting into our Canterbury Tales type pronunciations, of course,
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Speaker 3: and this means to his days here, yeah, oh here
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Speaker 3: of course in the God of War games, because he
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Speaker 3: is in fact the god of war, which could be
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Speaker 3: equated to the Roman god Mars.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Under you know how he's interpreted is that it's
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Speaker 1: under the interpretatio romana. Well done, so the Germans have
17:27
Speaker 1: the Romans. Anyway, moving on, we go to Wednesday in
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Speaker 1: Old English, it's Woden's Dieg, meaning the day of the
17:37
Speaker 1: Germanic god. Germanic god Woden or Woden known as Odin. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Odin known for being a super cool deity. He's friends
17:49
Speaker 1: with Ravens.
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Speaker 3: He you can identify with Odin. He's a fan of
17:54
Speaker 3: the Corvins.
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Speaker 2: Oh, thanks man.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got some good developments with them over in
18:01
Speaker 1: this part of the world. Anyway, cro news aside, I'll
18:05
Speaker 1: catch you guys up offline about that. What's next. So
18:08
Speaker 1: we've made it through the Sun, the Moon, tear, and
18:14
Speaker 1: the All Father.
18:15
Speaker 3: And you know, problematic behavior of Neil game and aside,
18:20
Speaker 3: The new season of sand Man is quite good, and
18:23
Speaker 3: that writing and the way it incorporates Norse and Greek
18:27
Speaker 3: mythology remains a favorite. Yes, Odin being a very pivotal
18:31
Speaker 3: character in the plot of The Sandman.
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Speaker 1: It's also interesting that we start with the sun, we
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Speaker 1: go to the moon, but then the god of War
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Speaker 1: comes before, you know, the higher level sort of all
18:46
Speaker 1: purpose god.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't make a whole hell a lot of sense,
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Speaker 2: does it. It's it's weird, okay, And then Thursday.
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Speaker 1: You know, this is one of the easy ones through
18:56
Speaker 1: his dog, the Norse god that we call four. It's
19:01
Speaker 1: so later, depending on how the Marvel movies go, it'll
19:04
Speaker 1: be called Hemsworth's Day or something if.
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Speaker 2: You must, Yes, it's true.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Friday, of course, we've got as frig Diagon, meaning
19:13
Speaker 3: the day of the Anglo Saxon god s Frigae, the
19:18
Speaker 3: Norse name for the planet of Venus being I'm gonna
19:23
Speaker 3: do my best here, Frigg yards Garna, Frigg's star freg.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we've called that. Yeah, we've got Saturday
19:34
Speaker 1: rounding it up. Named after the Roman gods Saturn, of course,
19:39
Speaker 1: associated with the Titan Chronos, the father of Zeus, and
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Speaker 1: many other Olympian deities. Its original name was saturnin is Dead,
19:50
Speaker 1: and in Latin it was Dias Setne Day of Saturn.
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Speaker 3: And according to our dearest pals over at Britannica, UH,
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Speaker 3: the month is based on a concept of lunation, which
20:04
Speaker 3: is the period in which the moon completes a cycle
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Speaker 3: of its phases, and that period lasts around twenty nine
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Speaker 3: and one half days, and it's pretty easy to recognize
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Speaker 3: and you know, visually, and short enough for the days
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Speaker 3: to be counted without having to resort to larger, more
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Speaker 3: complex calculations.
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Speaker 1: So that means most early calendars were essentially a collection
20:31
Speaker 1: of months. But when do we find the first calendar?
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Speaker 1: We know human civilization has always been counting time in
20:41
Speaker 1: one way or another, so there probably are multiple calendars
20:45
Speaker 1: that came and went and never got written down. They
20:49
Speaker 1: were just the understanding of a group of people before
20:52
Speaker 1: writing as a technology was commonplace. In twenty thirteen, some
20:58
Speaker 1: quite intelligent British archaeologists announced the discovery of what they
21:03
Speaker 1: said was the world's oldest calendar. It is a very
21:08
Speaker 1: strange site. You can pull up pictures of it. It's
21:11
Speaker 1: at Warrenfield in Scotland, and it's twelve holes. It's twelve
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Speaker 1: pits that align with the southeastern horizon. These pits point
21:23
Speaker 1: toward a hill that is associated with the sunrise on
21:27
Speaker 1: the mid winter solstice, and the archaeologists argue that hunter
21:32
Speaker 1: gatherers used the arrangement of these pits and this hill
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Speaker 1: to check the height and stage of the moon so
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Speaker 1: that they could track time in relation to the sun
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Speaker 1: and the change of the seasons.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and to that point, I had this kind of
21:48
Speaker 3: inkling that we had talked about the idea of calendars
21:52
Speaker 3: or marking of time having been discovered in cave paintings
21:57
Speaker 3: and etchings, and that is in fact the case. However,
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Speaker 3: the intent behind some of these findings is still kind
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Speaker 3: of hotly debated, right, But we do have some evidence
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Speaker 3: showing that twenty thousand year old ice age drawings represented
22:12
Speaker 3: a kind of lunar calendar designed to track the fertility
22:17
Speaker 3: of different animals.
22:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again there's a lot of forensics here to
22:22
Speaker 1: give some more numbers. The calendar in Scotland, if Calendar
22:26
Speaker 1: bat is about ten thousand years old, making it about
22:29
Speaker 1: twice as old as stone Hinge. And people are on
22:33
Speaker 1: a side note, most familiar with stone Hinge. But there
22:35
Speaker 1: are tons of things like that all spread.
22:39
Speaker 3: Spinal Tap song is that what we're talking about here,
22:41
Speaker 3: which the demons dwell, the banshees live and they do live. Well, Yes, very.
22:46
Speaker 2: Good, we'll keep it.
22:48
Speaker 1: And also we are hugely excited for the spinal tap
22:51
Speaker 1: sequel coming out. We actually interviewed Rob Reiner a while back.
22:58
Speaker 2: He gave us the Scoop Early Scoop.
23:01
Speaker 4: That was one of the coolest things I've done with
23:03
Speaker 4: my job. I was filling in on recording that just
23:05
Speaker 4: one day on stuff I don't to know. I was like,
23:06
Speaker 4: oh my god, this is so cool. He give us
23:09
Speaker 4: that scoop and I'm like, oh, that's a awesome.
23:12
Speaker 1: And yeah, and and to finish this point real quick
23:15
Speaker 1: before we move on, we were interviewing a rob about
23:18
Speaker 1: the phenomenal work he did on his JFK podcast, and
23:23
Speaker 1: the guy really knows his stuff. I think we're all
23:25
Speaker 1: so very impressed. But we're also going to bug him
23:28
Speaker 1: again when Spine the spinal Tap sequel comes out. That
23:33
Speaker 1: was such a such a strange job. That was a
23:35
Speaker 1: good day for all of us. It's a day we
23:38
Speaker 1: would mark on our calendar, our modern calendar. But how
23:43
Speaker 1: did we get there? We got there because, as we
23:52
Speaker 1: said at the top, people had to cooperate and coordinate
23:57
Speaker 1: together across distance. I think that's one of the big
24:00
Speaker 1: deciding points, right, Like, if you go to the history
24:04
Speaker 1: of calendars, you'll see that a lot of it orbits
24:08
Speaker 1: around the time the first cities are discovered were formed.
24:12
Speaker 1: The first ones we know about are between the Tigris
24:15
Speaker 1: and Euphrates rivers. The cradle of civilization, Yes, the cradle
24:19
Speaker 1: of civilization they originated in the Those rivers originate in
24:24
Speaker 1: the Taurust Mountains of southeastern Turkey. They diverge, they run
24:28
Speaker 1: south through Syria and Iraq, and then some more tributaries
24:32
Speaker 1: join the click from Iran and then they flow to
24:35
Speaker 1: the Persian Gulf. And this natural geography kind of dictated
24:42
Speaker 1: the way these ancient peoples thought about calendars.
24:45
Speaker 3: Can I just say that in my twilight years, I've
24:49
Speaker 3: gotten really into my calendar. I schedule everything, and it's
24:53
Speaker 3: just a way to kind of organize my mind in
24:56
Speaker 3: a way that like I don't feel overwhelmed and I
24:58
Speaker 3: can sort of like know exactlyactly what's going on.
25:01
Speaker 2: I even will like schedule myself.
25:03
Speaker 3: For leisure activities they're like working on music or whatever.
25:07
Speaker 3: It's just kind of a way to set intentions. I'm
25:09
Speaker 3: putting that out there. It's something that I dig.
25:11
Speaker 1: But of course, fellow ridiculous historians, we know the question
25:15
Speaker 1: on everybody's mind, why haven't we gone back to the
25:19
Speaker 1: Julian calendar?
25:20
Speaker 2: Noel, you know, a huge, a huge.
25:24
Speaker 1: Proportion of our listener base or just nuts for the
25:29
Speaker 1: Julian calendar.
25:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, named after the adventure of the Orange Julius Julius Caesar.
25:35
Speaker 1: Yes, yep, because it's a myth. See the Caesar salad
25:40
Speaker 1: is not named after Julius Caesar. That's that's untrue.
25:45
Speaker 2: But orange like a salad if we were pronouncing it correctly.
25:50
Speaker 1: Probably orange Julius is is definitely named after Julius Caesar.
25:55
Speaker 2: For sure. No one fact checked that. No, don't do it.
25:58
Speaker 2: Don't fact check anything we say.
26:00
Speaker 1: Actually, so, the end of the Roman Kingdom leads to
26:04
Speaker 1: the growth of the Roman Republic, and now there's a
26:07
Speaker 1: revision of the clindrical system. During this time, the Romans,
26:11
Speaker 1: of course, were super big fans of ripping off everything
26:15
Speaker 1: from the Greeks.
26:16
Speaker 2: They were bullish on ripping stuff off just in general.
26:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were influenced heavily by Greek calendars. The
26:24
Speaker 1: Greek calendars said, we're dividing the year into twelve lunar months.
26:29
Speaker 1: Some of them will be twenty nine days, some will
26:31
Speaker 1: be thirty. The Romans gave the third, fifth, seventh, and
26:36
Speaker 1: tenth months thirty one days each. And this is where
26:40
Speaker 1: we get that strange, complicated system. Every other month twenty
26:43
Speaker 1: nine days, except February twenty eight days, and then absurd
26:47
Speaker 1: twenty nine every leap year, so I know it.
26:51
Speaker 3: It does my head end. Bro, Sorry, no, can't get
26:53
Speaker 3: behind it. So I get it, and just thank God
26:56
Speaker 3: that we have like calendars these days.
26:58
Speaker 2: Don't have to We have people for it.
27:00
Speaker 1: You don't have to think about it except once every four.
27:03
Speaker 2: Years or we do a damn episode. Right.
27:06
Speaker 1: So, after the rollout of the Roman Republic, control over
27:11
Speaker 1: calendar calculation passed on to the high Priest of the day,
27:16
Speaker 1: so they were the ones who got to determine the
27:20
Speaker 1: number of days in a month and the organization of
27:24
Speaker 1: months in a year. They did something tricky. They realized
27:30
Speaker 1: that because the priest had such political power, they could
27:34
Speaker 1: fiddle with the calendar to LinkedIn or shorten the term
27:38
Speaker 1: of office of the consuls, like the earthly powers that
27:42
Speaker 1: they support or oppose exactly.
27:45
Speaker 3: I was going to make a joke about priests fiddling,
27:47
Speaker 3: but I decided against him.
27:48
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, I got it.
27:52
Speaker 1: So this this was hugely important. It sounds maybe a
27:56
Speaker 1: little bit academic at this point, but think of it
27:59
Speaker 1: this way, folks. What if your favorite or least favorite
28:02
Speaker 1: political party in the country could tell the public how
28:07
Speaker 1: long a year is, and what if when they like
28:11
Speaker 1: the folks in office. Like let's say the bull Moose
28:15
Speaker 1: Party is back in a big way and they're in charge.
28:18
Speaker 1: God yeah, thank goodness. Some adults got in the room
28:21
Speaker 1: and they're in charge of how long a year is.
28:24
Speaker 1: And whenever a bullboose president is in office, they make
28:29
Speaker 1: the year longer, and whenever a non bull moose.
28:32
Speaker 2: Guys in, they make the year shorter.
28:34
Speaker 3: I mean, not to get political at all, you know,
28:36
Speaker 3: whenever possible, But it doesn't seem like we're super far
28:40
Speaker 3: off from these types of things be coming up for debate.
28:44
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, Because if you could already jerrymander cities and
28:48
Speaker 1: voting districts, why not jerrymander the calendar.
28:51
Speaker 2: Let's just jerrymander time in general.
28:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And if you have a problem with it, sorry,
28:57
Speaker 1: we've jerrymandered the concept of jerrymanderin so certain people can't
29:02
Speaker 1: talk about it.
29:03
Speaker 3: And if we haven't talked about this on the show,
29:05
Speaker 3: which I'm sure we have, the concept of jerrymandering, that
29:07
Speaker 3: word is like it was like this kind of like
29:10
Speaker 3: it was a political cartoon. I think that represented this
29:13
Speaker 3: kind of monster, like the jerrymander sort of like the
29:17
Speaker 3: Jabberwocke because of the weird shapes of these redrawn districts
29:22
Speaker 3: for nefarious political purposes.
29:25
Speaker 1: So that's one of the interesting parts of the Julian calendar.
29:29
Speaker 1: In its design, it was able to be weaponized politically,
29:34
Speaker 1: which makes it dangerous. In addition to being imperfect, the
29:37
Speaker 1: calendar is named after Julius Caesar. Every fourth year has
29:41
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty six days instead of three hundred
29:44
Speaker 1: and sixty five, and this is because Roman astronomers calculated
29:49
Speaker 1: that a year is around three hundred and sixty five
29:53
Speaker 1: point two five days, So they were just trying to
29:56
Speaker 1: make up the average.
29:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then but also have like the the you know,
30:01
Speaker 3: heliocentric views and and then debates around that that were
30:07
Speaker 3: politically motivated and religiously motivve.
30:09
Speaker 1: Think about it. So the Roman astronomers, while being while
30:14
Speaker 1: many were heliocentric, think about it more like they noticed
30:19
Speaker 1: the pattern would repeat after a length of time.
30:22
Speaker 2: There you go, and whichever one is the center and
30:25
Speaker 2: the timing is the same.
30:27
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So Julian calendar, you know, the motto is
30:33
Speaker 1: better than nothing.
30:35
Speaker 2: You know, it's a really good dagline. It's a really
30:38
Speaker 2: it's up almost as good as cheers. Yeah, you know.
30:44
Speaker 1: This issue with the calendar, both the political issues and
30:49
Speaker 1: the just mathematical issues lead some people to a panic,
30:55
Speaker 1: a nerd panic that I know we have talked about
30:58
Speaker 1: in previous episodes. But to quote the White Stripes, it
31:02
Speaker 1: bears repeating because it's it's kind of hilarious. It's a
31:07
Speaker 1: nerd apocalypse. By the eighth century, Saint Bede, an English
31:12
Speaker 1: Benedictine monk, notices that the calendar has already drifted by
31:17
Speaker 1: three full days. He freaks out, No one listens to him.
31:21
Speaker 2: Fives that can have that calendar drift? Though, thing must
31:25
Speaker 2: be done.
31:26
Speaker 1: Something must be done, Call the guys from Fast and Furious.
31:30
Speaker 1: Five hundred years later, Roger Bacon says, Hey, the calendar's
31:35
Speaker 1: like a week ish off.
31:38
Speaker 2: Now, Oh jeez, what a mess. I know.
31:41
Speaker 1: And this this proves to be a problem for the
31:45
Speaker 1: church as well because of another holiday schedule that thoroughly
31:50
Speaker 1: confuses both of us. I think the celebration of Easter
31:55
Speaker 1: a real moveable feast. It's the date of the spring equinox,
31:59
Speaker 1: which has the church ch has earlier established falls on
32:02
Speaker 1: March twenty first for them, but by the sixteenth century,
32:06
Speaker 1: the equinox is occurring like ten days later.
32:09
Speaker 3: And can I just say, there's a source that Jeff
32:12
Speaker 3: found from masterclock dot com that describes the spring equinox
32:16
Speaker 3: and terms that I hadn't fully wrapped my head around
32:19
Speaker 3: prior to this. So I just want to read this quote.
32:21
Speaker 3: We're taught to the spring equinox when the sun is
32:23
Speaker 3: precisely overhead at the equator and when the day equals
32:27
Speaker 3: the night everywhere falls exactly on March twentieth.
32:32
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, amazing right, great work, guys, as long as
32:37
Speaker 1: we can stop that mission creep in that clindrical drift.
32:42
Speaker 1: And so what we see here is a realization that
32:48
Speaker 1: preciseness matters in these cylindrical calculations. Close enough or good
32:56
Speaker 1: enough is not in fact good enough, because over time
33:00
Speaker 1: the discrepancies or the inaccuracies will only expand. And that's
33:06
Speaker 1: why very slowly calendars drift out of sync with the seasons.
33:10
Speaker 1: By the sixteenth century, they had just been adding more
33:14
Speaker 1: and more leap days. About ten too many heap days.
33:18
Speaker 2: You're hurting me, You're hurting my brain.
33:20
Speaker 1: So this meant that easters at the wrong time. And
33:23
Speaker 1: this is where we get are super humble Broski from
33:27
Speaker 1: the past, Pope Gregory the thirteenth. Greg says, okay, this
33:33
Speaker 1: is getting cartoonish. I'm the Pope. I got a little
33:37
Speaker 1: bit of juice. All the best astronomers in the land,
33:41
Speaker 1: come work for me. This is not a choice. It's
33:46
Speaker 1: fifteen to eighty two. I need you guys to figure
33:49
Speaker 1: this out. And now they got together with Greg and
33:53
Speaker 1: they said, okay, we are going to have a calendar,
33:58
Speaker 1: and He's like, great, love calendars. It's great for my schedule.
34:01
Speaker 1: And they say, awesome, thanks Greg. We're also going to
34:04
Speaker 1: have leap days in the calendar. And then Greg goes, uh.
34:09
Speaker 2: But only in years divisible by one hundred and not
34:12
Speaker 2: by four hundred. Stop it, okay, stop it.
34:15
Speaker 1: This is where they get Greg back in on the pitch.
34:17
Speaker 2: He goes, okay, okay, tell me more.
34:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that would, according to Masterclock again, be just
34:23
Speaker 3: fine if the year were three hundred and sixty five
34:26
Speaker 3: point two four two five days.
34:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, which they believed it was.
34:35
Speaker 1: Uh, it is actually three point sixty five two four
34:40
Speaker 1: two one nine. Anyway, I know I'm right there.
34:46
Speaker 3: It's it's brave, so you know, if that were the
34:49
Speaker 3: only honeypot that the Pope had his popey fingers in,
34:54
Speaker 3: the plan might have been accepted more universally. But he
34:58
Speaker 3: also made the unilateral stipulation that jumped the calendar ten
35:05
Speaker 3: days forward, so Easter would be consistent with those previous
35:10
Speaker 3: formulas that were set at the Council, the first Council
35:14
Speaker 3: of Nicea in three twenty five AD.
35:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is incredibly wacky and inappropriate. You can
35:24
Speaker 1: get a message from upper management that says, hey, you
35:27
Speaker 1: know how you thought it was Thursday. It's ten days
35:30
Speaker 1: later from now, and everybody just pretend. So there are
35:36
Speaker 1: these common tales of varying accuracy, actually about people getting
35:44
Speaker 1: angry and believing that the rulers have stolen ten days
35:47
Speaker 1: of their lives. Yeah, you'll believe this somewhat apocryphal claims
35:52
Speaker 1: that there were riots. We don't know how true those
35:55
Speaker 1: claims are.
35:56
Speaker 2: That's right. So let's move on to when things are
36:00
Speaker 2: more or less righted.
36:02
Speaker 1: Or more or less closer to the world we live
36:05
Speaker 1: in now.
36:06
Speaker 2: Less wronged.
36:07
Speaker 1: Yes, at least we're all pretending everything's fine. Yeah, So
36:13
Speaker 1: most Catholic countries and colonies played ball with Greg's ideas,
36:19
Speaker 1: but some Protestant nations did object to losing ten days
36:24
Speaker 1: because they felt that if they went along with this,
36:29
Speaker 1: they would indicate that they were down with the Catholic Church,
36:32
Speaker 1: which was very antithetical to their existence. Some. As a result,
36:36
Speaker 1: some countries didn't switch over to this system for hundreds
36:41
Speaker 1: of years. The British Empire didn't get on the wagon
36:46
Speaker 1: with this until seventeen fifty two, and I think Japan
36:50
Speaker 1: didn't adopt the Greg's calendar until eighteen seventy three, Korea
36:55
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five.
36:56
Speaker 3: It's very strange, it's super strange. Four hundred years we
37:03
Speaker 3: have European calendars disagreeing by half a month. And it
37:08
Speaker 3: wasn't until the Bolshevik Revolution took over Russia that the
37:13
Speaker 3: Gregorian calendar was adopted and Greece was to become the
37:18
Speaker 3: last European country to switch, and that was as recently
37:22
Speaker 3: as nineteen twenty three. As far as calendar adoption is concerned,
37:26
Speaker 3: that's hella recent.
37:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because it leads to so many mishaps, so
37:33
Speaker 1: many crossed wires. As we say, Saudi Arabia didn't switch
37:37
Speaker 1: its official calendar from the lunar based Islamic calendar until
37:42
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. And right now, many countries, many belief systems,
37:49
Speaker 1: the people there will have two different calendars. Right You'll
37:52
Speaker 1: have your own non Gregorian calendar for one purpose or another,
37:56
Speaker 1: but then to do business globally and to speak with outside,
38:00
Speaker 1: you have the Gregorian calendar. It became our sort of
38:04
Speaker 1: lingua franca for measuring time, or lingua franca if you
38:08
Speaker 1: want to be fancy, and this is we all do,
38:12
Speaker 1: We all do. I'll have a cravat with my finger
38:17
Speaker 1: sandwiches and my finger sandwiches.
38:19
Speaker 2: So this is.
38:21
Speaker 1: How we got to where we are now. This is
38:24
Speaker 1: also a tease about the alternate non Greg's calendars out there,
38:31
Speaker 1: and that's going to be our next episode. No, we
38:34
Speaker 1: went in a lot of directions with this, and I
38:36
Speaker 1: think it's because we're both so thoroughly fascinated and confused
38:40
Speaker 1: by it.
38:41
Speaker 3: We got a little timey whymy wibbledy wobblede with this one, yall,
38:45
Speaker 3: so sorry, not sorry, but this is a fun one.
38:47
Speaker 2: Ben.
38:48
Speaker 1: This was a fun one thanks to our super producer
38:50
Speaker 1: Max Williams, thanks to our research associate Jeff factor G. Bartlett,
38:56
Speaker 1: and then of course thanks to our own Julius Julius Equin.
39:00
Speaker 3: Indeed, The quizt and aj Bahamas, Jacob's The Puzzler, Christopher
39:06
Speaker 3: Hasiotis and Eves Jeffcoats both here.
39:08
Speaker 1: In spirit, and uh, of course DC's reigning supervillain, the
39:14
Speaker 1: calendar Man.
39:15
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks.
39:24
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
39:28
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows