Where in history is the reference point of modern week day countdown? [SOLVED]
Where in history is the reference point of modern week day countdown? [SOLVED]
I mean, if today i.e. is Sunday then someone long time ago should have said "Today will be Sunday" for the first time in a period from today that is multiple of seven. I was assuming that it was Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582, but looks like he is not. I failed in googling and duckduckgoing out the answer, so I ask for Lemmy's collective wisdom!
EDIT: so question is not about the origin of 7-day week and sequence of weekday names, but about the exact reference point (day) of today’s weekday countdown. From when have people stopped adding or ommiting any adjustment 'out-of-week' days (like in Babylon or Rome) and kept counting to seven till today? In other words, there should be a point exactly N x 7 days ago from which the 7-day countdown has not been interrupted. Or at least the earliest known day in history that everyone on Earth agreed upon as a reference point
EDIT 2: Solved by https://lemmy.world/comment/1852458 Thanks everyone!
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From weeks in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week
The modern seven-day week can be traced back to the Babylonians, who used it within their calendar. Other ancient cultures had different week lengths, including ten in Egypt and an eight-day week for Etruscans.
There's probably a rabbit hole to go down to get into the mindset of who decided that a seven day week was a better system then what the neighbors are using. Babylonian astronomy and mathematics at the time likely played a role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonia
And overall there's a rich history to how we divide up the years in calendar reform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_reform
Personally, I've fallen in love with the international fixed calendar. It proposes getting rid of the 30 days hath November nonsense and making all months 28 days. Take all the month-ends and combine them into a new month Sol, and since 28 × 13 is 364, create a new holiday called world day that is part of no week, no month, just doin' it's own thing. Add on a monthless leap day when needed and like magic, months are now a functional unit of measurement. 1 month = 28 days.
On the link for the wikipaedia "week"page, lower down, under "Christian Europe", it mentions: "The seven-day weekly cycle has remained unbroken in Christendom, and hence in Western history, for almost two millennia, despite changes to the Coptic, Julian, and Gregorian calendars, demonstrated by the date of Easter Sunday having been traced back through numerous computistic tables to an Ethiopic copy of an early Alexandrian table beginning with the Easter of 311 CE."
So I guess, Easter Sunday in 311CE, someone called a big meeting and said something equivalent to "Right lads? All agreed? Today is Sunday, everywhere. Got that? Go and tell everyone you know. We're synchronising everyone's calendars."
Oh, this paragraph somehow escaped my attention 😯 Big thanks for pointing out!
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/u/wAkawAka@lemmy.world here is your answer.
(pls let me know if the tag worked)
A proper tag would be @wAkawAka@lemmy.world
As a programmer that whole month less day thing sounds like a total nightmare.
I also love this calendar. It's important to remember that "what day of the week is it" is an important question for at least two world religions, though, so months won't always start on the same day of the week from year to year — but every month in a given year will.