 When did ancient months start?

 When was the ancient new year?

 Babylonian calendar
 Egyptian calendar
 Other calendars used in the ancient Near East
 The rainy season
 Synergy with the earth
 Cro-magnon man (Lascaux caves in France)
 Iceland (before literacy)

→ See detailed information on the early Roman calendar.

When did ancient months start?
In the eighth century B.C.E., civilizations all over the world either discarded or modified their old
360 day calendars. The 360 day calendars had been in use for the greater part of a millennium. In
many places, month lengths immediately after that change were not fixed, but were based instead
upon observation of the sky.
Priest-astronomers were assigned the duty of declaring when a new month began – it was usually
said to have started at the first sighting of a new moon. Month length at that time was simply the
number of days that passed from one new lunar crescent to the next.
During those years in Rome, for example, a Pontifex (priest) observed the sky and announced a new
moon and therefore the new month to the king. For centuries afterward Romans referred to the
first day of each new month as Kalends or Kalends from their word calare (to announce solemnly, to
call out). The word calendar derived from this custom.
This practice of starting a month at the first sighting of a new moon was observed not only by
Romans but by Celts and Germans in Europe and by Babylonians and Hebrews in the Lavant. All of
these peoples began their month when a young crescent was first seen in the sky. This is still done
for the Islamic Calendar, but a new moon’s date is calculated for traditional lunar calendars that
are currently used in China and India.
During the period when month lengths were not fixed, new moons were usually sighted after either
29 or 30 days. If clouds obscured vision on the thirtieth day, a new month was declared to have
begun.
When month lengths were identical with lunations, only those that lasted 30 days were considered
to be normal. This was probably because all months had previously been 30 days for such a long
period of time.
During this period in Greece, for example, months that consisted of 30 days were considered to be
"full;" those that lasted only 29 days were said to be "hollow." Months containing 30 days were also
called "full" in Babylon, but those containing 29 were deemed to be "defective."
After month lengths in the Celtic Calendar became fixed, those that had been given 30 days were
termed "matos" (lucky) and those given 29 days "anmatos" (unlucky). This notion still exists today,
months of 30 days in the Hebrew Calendar are called "full" and those with 29 are deemed to be
"deficient."
When was the ancient new year?
In addition to their declaring the beginning of each month based upon a sighting of the new moon,
priest-astronomers were also charged with pinpointing the start of a year.
By observing the movement of Sirius, Egyptians came to grips with the fact that the year was more
than five days longer than their venerable 360-day calendar. This resulted in a change to their
method of approximating year length that had been in use for nearly a millennium. But it also
caused them to wonder where the additional days came from. In order to account for these
additional days, Egyptians created a myth about their sky-god, Nut.
 During the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonasser (traditionally dated between 747 and 734 B.C.E.)
priest/ astronomers in that country discontinued their practice of looking for the new moon in order
to name the beginning of a month. Instead, they returned to a fixed-length calendar that had 12
months of 30 days each, but with five days added at the end. 10
Usually at a date later than the mid-eighth century B.C.E., many other peoples who had previously
considered the year to be 360 days in length reluctantly returned to a calendar of twelve 30-day
months, but added five days to the end of their year. These additional days were considered to be
very unlucky or unpropitious.
Two eastern Mediterranean peoples who did not embrace Islam were early Christians in upper
Egypt, whom we now call Copts, and their neighbors to the south, the Ethiopians. Probably because
they were surrounded by Islamic peoples, Coptic and Ethiopian churches never adopted the Western
calendar. Instead, these two isolated pockets of Christianity continued to use the old 360-day
calendar.
These two calendars are identical except for year number. Copts date their calendar from C.E. 284
but Ethiopians date theirs from C.E. 7. Both of them observe three 365 day years followed by one
366 day year. Their years are divided into 12 months of 30 days each, and the extra five or six days
are added after the twelfth month.
Zoroastrians, who began their calendar in 389 B.C.E. with the birth of their founder, the prophet
Zoroaster, use a calendar of 365 days. It consists of twelve 30-day months with five "gatha days"
added at the end of the year. Each of the thirty days as well as each of the gatha days has its own
name. They are referred to by that name just as we speak of a day by its number in the month.
Beginning in 1906 of the Common Era, some modern Zoroastrians adopted the practice of adding an
additional day every four years.
One of Alexander the Great’s generals, Seleucus Nicator, founded (late 4th Century BCE and early
3rd century BCE) an empire that stretched from Asia Minor to India. He established a new calendar
that was essentially the same as one that had been used for some time in Syria. It contained twelve
months of 30 days each and an extra five days at the year’s end. Every fourth year an additional day
for a total of six days were added at the end of the year.
In Persia under the Sassanids, and in Armenia and Cappadocia the official system of time-reckoning
was twelve months of 30 days followed by five more days at the end of the year. However, Arabian
astronomers said the Sassanian year of twelve 30-day months was adjusted to the seasons by
intercalating a month every 120 years.
Following are details about several ancient calendars...

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

East bank of the River Euphrates, about 50 km south of Baghdad, Iraq Palace with legendary gardens built on
the banks of the Euphrates river by King Nebuchadnezzar II (which might have never existed except in the
minds of Greek poets and historians, although recent archaeological excavations uncovered the foundation of
the palace). Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote: "The approach to the Garden sloped like a hillside and the
several parts of the structure rose from one another tier on tier... On all this, the earth had been piled... and
was thickly planted with trees of every kind that, by their great size and other charm, gave pleasure to the
beholder... The water machines (raised) the water in great abundance from the river, although no one outside
could see it." (Painting by Mario Larrinaga)

Babylonian calendar
Overview
 The ancient Babylonians used a calendar with alternating 29- and 30-day months. This system
required the addition of an extra month three times every eight years, and as a further adjustment
the king would periodically order the insertion of an additional extra month into the calendar.
The Babylonians, who lived in what is now Iraq, added an extra month to their years at irregular
intervals. Their calendar, composed of alternate 29-day and 30-day months, kept roughly in step
with the lunar year. To balance the calendar with the solar year, the early Babylonians calculated
that they needed to add an extra month three times every eight years. But this system still did not
accurately make up for the accumulated differences between the solar year and the lunar year.
Whenever the king felt that the calendar had slipped too far out of step with the seasons, he
ordered another extra month. However, the Babylonian calendar was quite confused until the 300’s
B.C.E., when the Babylonians began to use a more reliable system.
Details
Babylonia was the ancient cultural region occupying southeastern Mesopotamia between the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers (modern southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf). Because the
city of Babylon was the capital of this area for so many centuries, the term Babylonia has come to
refer to the entire culture that developed in the area from the time it was first settled, about 4000
B.C.E. Before Babylon’s rise to political prominence (c. 1850 B.C.E.), however, the area was divided
into two countries: Sumer in the southeast and Akkad in the northwest. The Babylonian kingdom
flourished under the rule of the famous King, Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC). It was not until the reign
of Naboplashar (625-605 BC) of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty that the Mesopotamian civilization
reached its ultimate glory. His son, Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC) is credited for building the
legendary Hanging Gardens. It is said that the Gardens were built by Nebuchadnezzar to please his
wife or concubine who had been "brought up in Media and had a passion for mountain surroundings."
Five thousand years ago, Sumerians had a calendar that divided the year into 30-day months,
divided the day into 12 periods (each corresponding to 2 of our hours), and divided these periods
into 30 parts (each like 4 of our minutes).
In Mesopotamia, the solar year was divided into two seasons, the "summer," which included the
barley harvest in the second half of May or in the beginning of June, and the "winter," which roughly
corresponded to today’s fall-winter. Three seasons (Assyria) and four seasons (Anatolia) were
counted in northerly countries, but in Mesopotamia the bipartition of the year seemed natural. As
late as c. 1800 B.C.E. the prognoses for the welfare of the city of Mari, on the middle Euphrates,
were taken for six months.
The months began at the first visibility of the New Moon, and in the 8th century B.C.E. court
astronomers still reported this important observation to the Assyrian kings. The names of the
months differed from city to city, and within the same Sumerian city of Babylonia a month could
have several names, derived from festivals, from tasks (e.g. sheepshearing) usually performed in
the given month, and so on, according to local needs. On the other hand, as early as the 27th
century B.C.E., the Sumerians had used artificial time units in referring to the tenure of some high
official – e.g., on N-day of the turn of office of PN, governor. The Sumerian administration also
needed a time unit comprising the whole agricultural cycle; for example, from the delivery of new
barley and the settling of pertinent accounts to the next crop. This financial year began about two
months after barley cutting. For other purposes, a year began before or with the harvest. This
fluctuating and discontinuous year was not precise enough for the meticulous accounting of
Sumerian scribes, who by 2400 B.C.E. already used the schematic year of 30 x 12 = 360 days.
At about the same time, the idea of a royal year took precise shape, beginning probably at the time
of barley harvest, when the king celebrated the new (agricultural) year by offering first fruits to
gods in expectation of their blessings for the year. When, in the course of this year, some royal
exploit (conquest, temple building, and so on) demonstrated that the fates had been fixed favorably
by the celestial powers, the year was named accordingly; for example, as the year in which "the
temple of Ningirsu was built." Until the naming, a year was described as that "following the year
named (after such and such event)." The use of the date formulas was supplanted in Babylonia by
the counting of regnal years in the 17th century B.C.E.
The use of lunar reckoning began to prevail in the 21st century B.C.E. The lunar year probably owed
its success to economic progress. A barley loan could be measured out to the lender at the next
year’s threshing floor. The wider use of silver as the standard of value demanded more flexible
payment terms. A man hiring a servant in the lunar month of Kislimu for a year knew that the
engagement would end at the return of the same month, without counting days or periods of office
between two dates. At the city of Mari in about 1800 B.C.E., the allocations were already reckoned
on the basis of 29- and 30-day lunar months. In the 18th century B.C.E., the Babylonian Empire
standardized the year by adopting the lunar calendar of the Sumerian sacred city of Nippur. The
 power and the cultural prestige of Babylon assured the success of the lunar year, which began on
Nisanu 1, in the spring. When, in the 17th century B.C.E., the dating by regnal years became usual,
the period between the accession day and the next Nisanu 1 was described as "the beginning of the
kingship of PN," and the regnal years were counted from this Nisanu 1.
It was necessary for the lunar year of about 354 days to be brought into line with the solar
(agricultural) year of approximately 365 days. This was accomplished by the use of an intercalated
month. Thus, in the 21st century B.C.E., a special name for the intercalated month iti dirig appears
in the sources. The intercalation was operated haphazardly, according to real or imagined needs,
and each Sumerian city inserted months at will; e.g., 11 months in 18 years or two months in the
same year. Later, the empires centralized the intercalation, and as late as 541 B.C.E. it was
proclaimed by royal fiat. Improvements in astronomical knowledge eventually made possible the
regularization of intercalation; and, under the Persian kings (c. 380 B.C.E.), Babylonian calendar
calculators succeeded in computing an almost perfect equivalence in a lunisolar cycle of 19 years
and 235 months with intercalations in the years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 of the cycle. The new
year’s day (Nisanu 1) now oscillated around the spring equinox within a period of 27 days.
The Babylonian month names were Nisanu, Ayaru, Simanu, Du'uzu, Abu, Ululu, Tashritu,
Arakhsamna, Kislimu, Tebetu, Shabatu, Adaru. The month Adaru II was intercalated six times within
the 19-year cycle but never in the year that was 17th of the cycle, when Ululu II was inserted. Thus,
the Babylonian calendar until the end preserved a vestige of the original bipartition of the natural
year into two seasons, just as the Babylonian months to the end remained truly lunar and began
when the New Moon was first visible in the evening. The day began at sunset. Sundials and water
clocks served to count hours.
The influence of the Babylonian calendar was seen in many continued customs and usages of its
neighbor and vassal states long after the Babylonian Empire had been succeeded by others. In
particular, the Jewish calendar in use at relatively late dates employed similar systems of
intercalation of months, month names, and other details (see below The Jewish calendar). The
Jewish adoption of Babylonian calendar customs dates from the period of the Babylonian Exile in
the 6th century B.C.E.

The Egyptian calendar

Overview
The earliest Egyptian calendar was based on the moon’s cycles, but the lunar calendar failed to
predict a critical event in their lives: the annual flooding of the Nile river. The Egyptians soon
noticed that the first day the "Dog Star," which we call Sirius, in Canis Major was visible right before
sunrise was special. The Egyptians were probably the first to adopt a mainly solar calendar. This so-
called ‘heliacal rising’ always preceded the flood by a few days. Based on this knowledge, they
devised a 365-day calendar that seems to have begun in 4236 B.C.E., the earliest recorded year in
history.
They eventually had a system of 36 stars to mark out the year and in the end had three different
calendars working concurrently for over 2000 years: a stellar calendar for agriculture, a solar year
of 365 days (12 months x 30 + 5 extra) and a quasi-lunar calendar for festivals. The later Egyptian
calendars developed sophisticated Zodiac systems, as in the stone calendar at right. According to
the famed Egyptologist J. H. Breasted, the earliest date known in the Egyptian calendar corresponds
to 4236 B.C.E. in terms of the Gregorian calendar.
Details
The ancient Egyptians originally employed a calendar based upon the Moon, and, like many peoples
throughout the world, they regulated their lunar calendar by means of the guidance of a sidereal
calendar. They used the seasonal appearance of the star Sirius (Sothis); this corresponded closely to
the true solar year, being only 12 minutes shorter. Certain difficulties arose, however, because of
the inherent incompatibility of lunar and solar years. To solve this problem the Egyptians invented a
 schematized civil year of 365 days divided into three seasons, each of which consisted of four
months of 30 days each. To complete the year, five intercalary days were added at its end, so that
the 12 months were equal to 360 days plus five extra days. This civil calendar was derived from the
lunar calendar (using months) and the agricultural, or Nile, fluctuations (using seasons); it was,
however, no longer directly connected to either and thus was not controlled by them. The civil
calendar served government and administration, while the lunar calendar continued to regulate
religious affairs and everyday life.
In time, the discrepancy between the civil calendar and the older lunar structure became obvious.
Because the lunar calendar was controlled by the rising of Sirius, its months would correspond to
the same season each year, while the civil calendar would move through the seasons because the
civil year was about one-fourth day shorter than the solar year. Hence, every four years it would
fall behind the solar year by one day, and after 1,460 years it would again agree with the lunisolar
calendar. Such a period of time is called a Sothic cycle.
Because of the discrepancy between these two calendars, the Egyptians established a second lunar
calendar based upon the civil year and not, as the older one had been, upon the sighting of Sirius. It
was schematic and artificial, and its purpose was to determine religious celebrations and duties. In
order to keep it in general agreement with the civil year, a month was intercalated every time the
first day of the lunar year came before the first day of the civil year; later, a 25-year cycle of
intercalation was introduced. The original lunar calendar, however, was not abandoned but was
retained primarily for agriculture because of its agreement with the seasons. Thus, the ancient
Egyptians operated with three calendars, each for a different purpose.
The only unit of time that was larger than a year was the reign of a king. The usual custom of dating
by reign was: "year 1, 2, 3 . . . , etc., of King So-and-So," and with each new king the counting
reverted back to year One. King lists recorded consecutive rulers and the total years of their
respective reigns.
The civil year was divided into three seasons, commonly translated: Inundation, when the Nile
overflowed the agricultural land; Going Forth, the time of planting when the Nile returned to its
bed; and Deficiency, the time of low water and harvest.
The months of the civil calendar were numbered according to their respective seasons and were not
listed by any particular name–e.g. third month of Inundation–but for religious purposes the months
had names. How early these names were employed in the later lunar calendar is obscure.
The days in the civil calendar were also indicated by number and listed according to their
respective months. Thus a full civil date would be: "Regnal year 1, fourth month of Inundation, day
5, under the majesty of King So-and-So." In the lunar calendar, however, each day had a specific
name, and from some of these names it can be seen that the four quarters or chief phases of the
Moon were recognized, although the Egyptians did not use these quarters to divide the month into
smaller segments, such as weeks. Unlike most people who used a lunar calendar, the Egyptians
began their day with sunrise instead of sunset because they began their month, and consequently
their day, by the disappearance of the old Moon just before dawn.
As was customary in early civilizations, the hours were unequal, daylight being divided into 12
parts, and the night likewise; the duration of these parts varied with the seasons. Both water clocks
and sundials were constructed with notations to indicate the hours for the different months and
seasons of the year. The standard hour of constant length was never employed in ancient Egypt.
Sirius: the 'Dog Star’
Early Egyptians depended on the Nile’s annual rising and flooding. Each year as that great river
flooded it brought down mountain soil to the Egyptian plain. This enriched the fields and enabled
creation of an agricultural system that supported a large civilization.
In the eighth century B.C.E., the Egyptian Pharoh’s primary advisor, the Vizier, was charged with
reporting the first appearance of the bright star we call Sirius after it had been missing from the sky
for (depending upon the observer’s latitude) approximately two weeks. This first appearance of
Sirius in the pre-dawn sky was used to start the so-called Egyptian "lunar" calendar year, which was
used for purposes of regulating religious affairs and everyday life.
Shortly after Sirius first reappeared in the east, the Nile would have its annual life-giving flood.
Because of the Nile’s flooding at this time, the fixing of the new year could well be said to have
been based on a geophysical as well as an astronomical event. Although many other stars may be
used to fix the beginning of a sidereal year, the Egyptians made an excellent choice for this
purpose. Sirius – Egyptians called it Sothis – not only signaled the approaching Nile flood, but is the
brightest "fixed" star in the heavens.
In Egypt at the present time, Sirius rises just before the sun late in July, but usually can’t be seen
until early August. This is because as sunrise approaches, stars fade from view and the light of dawn
 obliterates starlight. At the time Sirius is about to reappear, the constellation Orion is fully visible
in the lower eastern sky. With the bright star Betelguese on his shoulder, anyone familiar with
constellations would find Orion hard to miss. Sirius can be seen in the next constellation to rise
(Canis Major). Because of this close relationship, Sirius was sometimes referred to as the "dog star"
by early Greeks who thought of Canis Major as one of Orion’s hunting hounds.
Other calendars used in the ancient Near East
Of the calendars of other peoples of the ancient Near East, very little is known. Thus, though the
names of all or of some months are known, their order is not. The months were probably
everywhere lunar, but evidence for intercalation is often lacking; for instance, in Assyria.
The Assyrians
Assyria was a kingdom of northern Mesopotamia that became the center of one of the great empires
of the ancient Middle East. It was located in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. For
accounting, the Assyrians also used a kind of week, of five days, as it seems, identified by the name
of an eponymous official. Thus, a loan could be made and interest calculated for a number of weeks
in advance and independently of the vagaries of the civil year. In the city of Ashur, the years bore
the name of the official elected for the year; his eponym was known as the limmu. As late as about
1070 B.C.E., his installation date was not fixed in the calendar. From about 1100 B.C.E., however,
Babylonian month names began to supplant Assyrian names, and, when Assyria became a world
power, it used the Babylonian lunisolar calendar.
Assyria was a dependency of Babylonia and later of the Mitanni kingdom during most of the 2nd
millennium B.C.E. It emerged as an independent state in the 14th century B.C.E., and in the
subsequent period it became a major power in Mesopotamia, Armenia, and sometimes in northern
Syria. Assyrian power declined after the death of Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1208 B.C.E.). It was restored
briefly in the 11th century B.C.E. by Tiglath-pileser I, but during the following period both Assyria
and its rivals were preoccupied with the incursions of the seminomadic Aramaeans. The Assyrian
kings began a new period of expansion in the 9th century B.C.E., and from the mid-8th to the late
7th century B.C.E., a series of strong Assyrian kings–among them Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II,
Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon–united most of the Middle East, from Egypt to the Persian Gulf, under
Assyrian rule. The last great Assyrian ruler was Ashurbanipal, but his last years and the period
following his death, in 627 B.C.E., are obscure. The state was finally destroyed by a Chaldean-
Median coalition in 612-609 B.C.E. Famous for their cruelty and fighting prowess, the Assyrians were
also monumental builders, as shown by archaeological sites at Nineveh, Ashur, and Nimrud.
The Hittites
The calendar of the Hittite Empire is known even less well. As in Babylonia, the first Hittite month
was that of first fruits, and, on its beginning, the gods determined the fates. Hittites were a
member of an ancient Indo-European people who appeared in Anatolia (modern day Turkey) at the
beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.E.; by 1340 B.C.E. they had become one of the dominant
powers of the Middle East. Probably originating from the area beyond the Black Sea, the Hittites
first occupied central Anatolia, making their capital at Hattusa (modern Bogazköy). Early kings of
the Hittite Old Kingdom, such as Hattusilis I (reigned c. 1650-c. 1620 B.C.E.), consolidated and
extended Hittite control over much of Anatolia and northern Syria. Hattusilis’ grandson Mursilis I
raided down the Euphrates River to Babylon, putting an end (c. 1590 B.C.E.) to the Amorite dynasty
there. After the death of Mursilis, a dynastic power struggle ensued, with Telipinus finally gaining
control about 1530 B.C.E. In the noted Edict of Telipinus, long upheld by succeeding generations, he
attempted to end lawlessness and to regulate the royal succession. The fall of the Hittite empire (c.
1193 B.C.E.) was sudden and may be attributed to large-scale migrations that included the Sea
Peoples.
Hittite cuneiform tablets discovered at Bogazköy (in modern Turkey) have yielded important
information about their political organization, social structure, economy, and religion. The Hittite
king was not only the chief ruler, military leader, and supreme judge but also the earthly deputy of
the storm god; upon dying, he himself became a god. Hittite society was essentially feudal and
agrarian, the common people being either freemen, "artisans," or slaves. Anatolia was rich in
metals, especially silver and iron. In the empire period the Hittites developed iron-working
technology, helping to initiate the Iron Age. The religion of the Hittites is only incompletely known,
though it can be characterized as a tolerant polytheism that included not only indigenous Anatolian
deities but also Syrian and Hurrian divinities.
Iran
 At about the time of the conquest of Babylonia in 539 B.C.E., Persian kings made the Babylonian
cyclic calendar standard throughout the Persian Empire, from the Indus to the Nile. Aramaic
documents from Persian Egypt, for instance, bear Babylonian dates besides the Egyptian. Similarly,
the royal years were reckoned in Babylonian style, from Nisanu 1. It is probable, however, that at
the court itself the counting of regnal years began with the accession day. The Seleucids and,
afterward, the Parthian rulers of Iran maintained the Babylonian calendar. The fiscal administration
in northern Iran, from the 1st century B.C.E., at least, used Zoroastrian month and day names in
documents in Pahlavi (the Iranian language of Sasanian Persia). The origin and history of the
Zoroastrian calendar year of 12 months of 30 days, plus five days (that is, 365 days), remain
unknown. It became official under the Sasanian dynasty, from about C.E. 226 until the Arab
conquest in 621. The Arabs introduced the Muslim lunar year, but the Persians continued to use the
Sasanian solar year, which in 1079 was made equal to the Julian year by the introduction of the leap
year.
Read more about the current use of this calculator (the Persian calculator) in Iran.

The rainy season

The Himba people in Ekambu, Namibia, are some of the last peoples in the world living in relative
isolation from modernity. "When the thunderstorms start and the leaves grow from the ground,
that’s how we know it’s the new year," said Maverihepisa Koruhama, one of the villagers in Ekambu.
They measure time by the shifting sun and mark the coming of the new year with the arrival of
seasonal rains that transform the parched red soil into a carpet of green. In their Herero language,
the word for "day" is the same as the word for "sun," and the word for "year" means "rain." (Above
left, children watch as a Himba woman, senior wife of Waitavira Tjambiru, anoints her arm with
butter fat mixed with red ochre outside her hut in Etengwa, Namibia.)
Synergy with the earth
James Lynch, an American scientist who has spent the past two decades helping Costa Rican
farmers, said he has learned from them the importance of timing. A tree cut down during a new
moon, he said, will quickly be ravaged by the insects, while one felled several days before a full
moon will stay free of termites for years. Lynch now follows the practice. "But I’ve never seen any
scientific study to back it up," he said.
Indigenous knowledge can be faulty. "Traditional people sometimes get things right, and sometimes
get them wrong," said Alan Fiske, a psychological anthropologist at the University of California at
Los Angeles. "Some things people do are bad for them." The problem, Fiske noted, is that verifying
traditional knowledge is not easy. The scientific method can be expensive, and data can be difficult
to obtain.

A dappled, brown horse and a lunar calendar

Lascaux caves, France (about 15,000 years old)
 Half the cycle: 13 dots and an empty square

The Pleiades star cluster sits above the bull’s shoulder

Cro-magnon man (Lascaux caves in France)

What could be the oldest lunar calendar ever created was been identified on the walls of the
famous, prehistoric caves at Lascaux in France. The interpretation that symbolic paintings, dating
back 15,000 years, show the Moon going through its different phases comes from Dr. Michael
Rappenglueck, of the University of Munich. The German researcher has previously associated
patterns left in the caves with familiar stars and constellations. He now says groups of dots and
squares painted among representations of bulls, antelope and horses depict the 29-day cycle of the
Earth’s satellite.
Works of art
Visiting the Lascaux caves is an opportunity most people would never get– to protect the historic
site from unnecessary wear and tear, all visitors now tour a mock-up of the caves, the so-called
Lascaux II. Visiting the caves, once one’s eyes adjust to the half-light, visitors are struck with
amazement. Anyone who has seen the paintings on the walls can be left in no doubt that they
represent some of the greatest works of art every created.
"The secret of understanding these caves," Dr Rappenglueck says, "is to understand the people who
painted these walls. They painted the sky, but not all of it. Just the parts that were specially
important to them."
Cro-magnon man
The animals were painted on to the walls of the chamber by Cro-magnon man, one of our close
relations, 15,000 years ago. He thrived in a temperate valley in the Dordogne while the rest of
Europe was held in the grip of an ice age.
Dr. Rappenglueck gave a tour to David Whitehouse of the BBC. "Here it is," he said, as he headed
down a passage. He was pointing to a line of dots painted half way up the wall. "Count them. Count
them." Below a stunning painting of a deer was a row of 13 dots, ending in a square. "Why 13?"
"It’s half of the Moon’s monthly cycle," Dr. Rappenglueck said. "One dot for each day the Moon is in
the sky. At the new Moon, when it vanishes from the sky, we see an empty square, perhaps
symbolically representing the absent Moon. "But there’s more, further along." The Munich
researcher gestured to me to move along the passageway. Beneath a dappled, brown horse with a
dark mane was another row of dots. This time there were more of them.
"There are 29 of them - one for each day of the Moon’s 29-day cycle when it runs through its phases
in the sky. It was a rhythm of nature that was important to these people." Dr. Rappenglueck looked
 around at the bulls, antelope and horses painted on the walls with such obvious admiration. "They
were aware of all the rhythms of nature. Their survival depended on them, they were a part of
them."
But there is another puzzle. The series of dots that curve away from the main row. "Why do they do
that?"
"I think that indicates the time of the new Moon, when it disappears from the sky for several days,"
said Dr. Rappenglueck.
There is definitely astronomy on the walls of Lascaux. Earlier this year, Dr Rappenglueck identified
a series of constellations painted on the wall of a shaft off the main chamber at Lascaux. The tiny
pattern of the Pleiades star cluster can also be seen hanging above the shoulder of a bull near the
entrance to the main passageway.
We will probably never understand completely what Cro-magnon man had in mind when he painted
the Lascaux caves. The images of the animals seem obvious but what are we to make of the
geometrical shapes and patterns scattered in between these creatures?
Calendars in Iceland (before literacy)
Viking origins
Traditionally, the Vikings originating in Scandinavia in the early Middle Ages are associated with
violence and brutal force. However, the views of modern scholars paint a less mono-chromatic
picture. Many of the activities of the Vikings required and produced knowledge of time-reckoning
and of what we would nowadays classify as astronomy. For example, their extensive travelling and
trade must have involved some knowledge of astronomy. The necessity of such knowledge is
generally recognized in the case of coastal navigation, but also holds for inland travel through
previously unknown areas, such as the vast lands of Eastern Europe.
Inland travel and coastal navigation is one thing, but regular trans-oceanic traffic is quite another.
Yet such traffic was required to support the Scandinavian settlement of Iceland and Greenland,
around the years 900 and 1000 respectively, at a time when the people of Europe knew nothing of
the compass or the sextant. Even with good luck the oceanic voyage would take about a week, and
without it land might not be sighted for several weeks. The navigational methods used included
both terrestrial and celestial observations. There is hardly any doubt that the knowledge written
down on vellum in Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries derives to a high degree from
these observations and this experience.
Why did they need a calendar?
In 930, the Icelanders decided to establish the Althingi, a kind of parliament where an important
part of the population gathered once a year for purposes of legislation and justice. Those who went
there would spend two to five weeks away from home at a precious time of the year. The farms
were scattered at long distances and the landscape often barely passable. Therefore the traditional
Scandinavian method of summoning meetings by message was not viable – they needed a simple and
reliable calendar to help people know when to start from home so as to arrive at the same time as
the others. Moreover, since the Icelandic summer is short, it was a matter of primary concern to
utilize summer time as well as possible, and date the parliament at the time of summer when the
loss of domestic labor was least harmful.
To understand the need for a calendar we may also look at the agriculture itself and its annual
cycle. Certainly, the caprices of Icelandic weather and nature are such that the calendar may often
be a bad guide for action. In deciding when to let cattle and sheep out on grass or when to start
hay-making it is better to observe the actual signs of nature than the calendar. But there are
certain kinds of annual operation where the calendar proves superior: for example, in determining
when to sow the grain, something which people had tried with little success in the first centuries of
settlement in Iceland. Another good example is that of deciding when to let the ram to the ewes. It
is important to do this at the right time in the winter so that the lambs have the best possible
prospect of growing in the short summer, without too much risk of interludes of bad weather in the
spring just after they are born. When the individual farmer makes his decision on this at some point
around Christmas time, he has no clear natural signs of a terrestrial nature to go by.
How similar was it to the Julian calendar?
In the brief history of Iceland called Íslendingabók (The Book of the Icelanders, Libellum
Islandorum), written by Ari the Learned in the period 1122-33, we have a report on a calendar
reform around 955:
This was when the wisest men of the country had counted in two semesters 364 days or 52 weeks-
then they observed from the motion of the sun that the summer moved back towards the spring;
but there was nobody to tell them that there is one day more in two semesters than you can
measure by whole weeks, and that was the reason.
There was a man called Thorsteinn the black, a very wise man. When they came to the Althing he
sought the remedy that they should add a week to every seventh summer and try how that would
work.
By a correct count there are 365 days in a year if it is not a leap year, but then one more; but by
our count there are 364. But when in our count a week is added to every seventh year, seven years
together will be equally long on both counts. But if there are 2 leap years between the ones to be
augmented, you need to add to the sixth.
How did Thorsteinn the Black determine his intercalation? His farm was favorably located in the
country to utilize the so-called mountain circle method, that is, to follow the annual motion of
sunrise and sunset near the horizon where he would have suitably distant mountains and other
reference points in the landscape to make fairly exact observations possible. At high latitudes the
points of sunrise and sunset move so fast that this method could easily be used to determine the
length of the year to within a day.
According to this, people started by counting 52 weeks or 364 days in the year. When they realized
the insufficiency of this they tried the remedy of intercalating one week every seventh year
(sumarauki), thus making the average year 365 days. The method chosen may seem strange to us
but it is a natural consequence of the important role of the week in the original calendar.
So far the interpretation of the text seems straightforward. However, the text continues to describe
the relation and adaptation of the Icelandic calendar to the Julian one, which must have been
gradually introduced in Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, following formal
Christianisation of the country in the year 1000. The text says that if there are two leap years
between the years to be increased by a week, then the sixth year (instead of the seventh) should be
increased. This is plainly wrong and would yield a worse approximation than the more simple rule of
intercalating a week every sixth year. Scholars find this confusing, except by assuming the Latin
meaning of the numerals. Thus ‘septimo quoque anno’ actually means ‘every sixth year’ by our
count. In this way Ari’s text can be interpreted so as to coincide with practice in his time, as seen
from almost contemporary Easter tables. Also, he would escape Occam’s razor, since his formula
would otherwise be more complicated than necessary for its accuracy.