As the year draws to a close, let’s look at some weird and strange ways people measure time. From the beginning, the simplest one created was the day and night cycle we use to measure time within days. If you look up you would understand how this works. This evolved into figuring out the seasons which is very useful to everyone.

The first notable calendar is the Mayan calendar, which has the first usage of 365 days within a year we normally have within our current calendar, known as the Gregorian Calendar. The Mayan Calendar is unusually complicated, which spans out very long as it seems to categorize days as 260 cycles (day and night), this seems to be made so that priests can make things up and the civilians will eat it up because they won’t check the very complicated calendar. Most of the calendar is taken in with events, historical and mystical, which decide the luck of that day. 

During the Reign of Terror in France, there were many changes but one of them was the change from the usual Gregorian calendar to the republican calendar, which was a massive headache to anyone who had plans based on within the Gregorian calendar. The Republican calendar had 10 days in a week and 3 weeks within a month, 3 months per season total to 12 months per year. All months and days were given unique names which also are jarring to the French people, not to mention when leap years occur it completely messed up everything, years also had to be decided by astronomers.

In Japan eras were decided by the emperor, starting from the Meiji revolution where the emperor was able to gain its power from the shogun. With each emperor naming their reign, first was the Meiji Era, then the Taisho era, Showa era, then the Heisei era, and currently, we are in the Reiwa era. This originated in China then came to Japan just like their previous calendar before they turned to the Gregorian calendar like everyone else. 

The Chinese Lunar calendar uses the moon and sun, unlike the Gregorian calendar which uses the sun as a basis. Using the winter and summer solstice they divided the years by 24  With each year being represented by the 12 Chinese zodiac constellations, changing at the first/last day of the year. 

The Gregorian calendar, this is the calendar that everyone uses and what people can think about calendars. Created by Pope Gregory XIII to reform the Julian calendar which had 365¼ and was created by Julius Caesar, it was off by 11 minutes and 14 seconds which shifted the time of the seasons by 10 days from when it started. This is why the Gregorian calendar was created to shift it back into place and make it easy to readjust the calendar as the seasons shift by one day every century. 

These calendars were used to figure out time and make a way of measurement. Using this was to get a better understanding of the world, and to be advantageous as if they know how to set up and plan for things such as agriculture, war, and other various things that take longer than a day. It is interesting to see how people in the old days were able to measure times and how it affects us even to this day.