Who invented the first calender similar to the American calender we use today?

Question

Was he or she a "copy cat" of another calender such as the Chinese calender? How did he or she come up with the months' names? If there are different origins for the months, please list them, and the same if there are more than one inventors of the actual calender itself. Please no silly answers.

Answer 1

We use the Gregorian calendar today, promulgated under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It replaced the Julian calendar, so called because it was promulgated by Julius Caesar when he was pontifex maximus ("highest priest") about 60BC. The difference is 11 days. The orthodox churches never accepted the Gregorian calendar, because it would change days of feast days. In recent times, confusion arose over wehen the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government in Russia. The Julian calendar had it Oct. 25, 1917, whereas the Gregorian was Nov. 5. Thus the book, "The Hunt for Red October."

Answer 2

The Sumarians were the first people to divide the day into two, 12-hour periods.

The concept of a seven-day weeks appears to have begun with the Hebrews, although it may have been the Babyloneans or even the Persians. The English names for the seven days are mostly those of Nordic gods, except for the more general day of the sun, day of the moon, and the day of Saturn (a Roman god).

Many ancient peoples used the moon's motion around the earth to come up with the concept of the month.

The Egyptians were the first to develop a twelve-month, 365-day calendar based upon the earth's movement around the sun. This helped them predict Nile River flooding, which helped them plant their crops at the correct time of the year.

One of the most important developments in the history of calendars was that attributed to Roman dictator Julius Caesar in the 1st century B.C. We owe the concept of leap year to Caesar, as well as the names of the months. The original calendar began with March (named after the god of war, Mars) in the spring, which explains why the months September, October, November, and December derive from the Latin words for seven, eight, nine, and ten.

Caesar was so proud of his accomplishment that he took a day from the last month of the year (February) and switched it to the fifth month, which he then named after himself (hence, July). Later his nephew Octavius (called Augustus) did the same with the following month. Still later, one month was named after the god of beginnings (Janus), and this became the first month of the year.

Our current calendar is called the Gregorian calendar, which is a modified form of the Julian calendar described above. This was introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582.

Answer 3

The calendar has a long history. I've heard the Mayan calendar is the most accurate, but we're based on a Gregorian update of the Julian (Roman) calendar.

There doesn't seem to be any connection to Asian calendars, so no real "copy cats" involved. Different civilizations observed similar solar activity and noted the seasons repeated. So they came up with ways to keep track. Actually there's still no perfect calendar, but I think we're stuck with what we have.

The names come from either Roman rulers, like Augustus and Julius Caesar or the names of their gods. They're numbered too, like October was originally the 8th month, November the 9th, December the 10th etc. There's a lot of unusual history to our calendars. Have fun investigating further.

Here's a short history to get you started ...

Answer 4

Please define what an "American Calender" is. In the rest of the Western world the Gregorian calendar is used. This is a modified version of the Julian calendar which was innaccurate and had to be corrected. Please use these terms in a Wiki search and you will have your answers. There is no listing for American calender though.

Answer 5

We use the Gregorian calender. Thanks to Pope Gregory and his bunch. People who work with geneology know that there is confusion in dates for the 1600 and sometimes into the 1700 concerning dates of birth and death depending on the calender used.

Answer 6

The calender that we use is base on the Augustine calender from the emperor Augustus of Rome and hence the month, as is Juli for Julius Cesar.

Answer 7

We use the Gregorian calandar devised after pope gregor wanted things dated from Christ birth. A monk did most of the calculating and hence we use the gregrian calandar because we are decendants of Europe.