Before going to sleep last night I started to think. As you can tell by now, that is the time when I get most of my interesting thoughts that I share with you.
Yesterday I was thinking about why weeks have seven days and what if we had 5 days a week or had 8 day weeks in a month, with three rest days after each other. It is a bit complex, so when I woke up I checked around and this is what I found on the seven days week pattern.
The seven-day week was established as imperial calendar in the late Roman empire and furthered by the Christian church for historical reasons. It was used by the British Empire and spread world-wide. We also are well aware of the religious significance of the number 7
Now this is interesting
" One viable theory correlates the seven day week to the seven (astrological) "planets" known to the ancients: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. The number seven does not seem an obvious choice to match lunar or solar periods, however.
A solar year could be more evenly divided into weeks of 5 days, and the moon phases five-day and six-day weeks make a better short term fit (6 times 5 is 30) to the lunar (synodic) month (of about 29.53 days) than the current week (4 times 7 is 28). The seven-day week may have been chosen because its length approximates one moon phase (one quarter = 29.53 / 4 = 7.3825)."
From another site I found this:
"The first thing to understand is that a week is not necessarily seven days. In pre-literate societies weeks of 4 to 10 days were observed; those weeks were typically the interval from one market day to the next. Four to 10 days gave farmers enough time to accumulate and transport goods to sell. (The one week that was almost always avoided was the 7-day week -- it was considered unlucky!)
The 7-day week was introduced in Rome (where ides, nones, and calends were the vogue) in the first century A.D. by Persian astrology fanatics, not by Christians or Jews. The idea was that there would be a day for the five known planets, plus the sun and the moon, making seven; this was an ancient West Asian idea.
However, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire in the time of Constantine (c. 325 A.D.), the familiar Hebrew-Christian week of 7 days, beginning on Sunday, became conflated with the pagan week and took its place in the Julian calendar. Thereafter, it seemed to Christians that the week Rome now observed was seamless with the 7-day week of the Bible -- even though its pagan roots were obvious in the names of the days: Saturn's day, Sun's day, Moon's day. The other days take their equally pagan names in English from a detour into Norse mythology: Tiw's day, Woden's day, Thor's day, and Fria's day.
The amazing thing is that today the 7-day week, which is widely viewed as being Judeo-Christian, even Bible-based, holds sway for civil purposes over the entire world, including countries where Judaism and Christianity are anathema. Chinese, Arabs, Indians, Africans, Japanese, and a hundred others sit down at the U.N. to the tune of a 7-day week, in perfect peace (at least calendrically!).
So dear is this succession of 7 days that when the calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian the week was preserved, though not the days of the month: in 1752, in England, Sept. 14 followed Sept. 2 -- but Thursday followed Wednesday, as always. Eleven days disappeared from the calendar -- but not from the week! "
More infomation:
" it's true that the average time from, say, half-moon to full moon is 7.383 days, but this is less than 12% closer to 7 than to 8. (Possibly mindful of this, the Romans had an 8-day week.) In any case, the exact moment of half or full moon is hard to judge. The moon determines the month, not the week (the very word "month" has been related to "moon" for thousands of years; in Sanskrit they are the same.) "
The wiki link for more information wiki link
I did not bargin on so much information when I first thought of it yesterday, but I think in summary we can adjust our weeks to more or less days per month as long as we can figure out how it fits in our lives. At this moment the seven day week is a set pattern that would be hard to change, but if we say get all destroyed by a nuclear war and we have two hundred people living with roaches (yes they do not die), then we can adjust the week as we perfer.
I leave this post for Caffinated to analyze and give me a summary (or anyone with more brains than her).
I also thought about Bizzaro worlds, but I will leave that for another post.
Purgatorian Post #874
12 Responses to “3 day weeks”
ObviOusly ...u ...hate... ur jOb 
!!
!!Dude..inta walla fathe 
interesting... can we have one day weeks?
honey, you think too much. doesnt your brain complain of being abused?
I think the seven day week is fine, but i would alter the work-week.... make it four days work and three days off... its more balanced that way...
The christians took their calender from the egyptians. I think before Julius Ceasar decided on the Julian calender, he brought a greek mathmetician/astrologer to Egypt with him and this guy studied the egyptians and their methods for calculating days and months and that became the model for the Julian calender...
The christians took their calender from the egyptians. I think before Julius Ceasar decided on the Julian calender, he brought a greek mathmetician/astrologer to Egypt with him and this guy studied the egyptians and their methods for calculating days and months and that became the model for the Julian calender...
Thanks for the shout-out, Purgatory.
What I do find interesting is that the Solar Calendar (Solar C.) is based on the Lunar Calendar (Lunar C.), though many do not know it. People may initially even agree, that “Of course the Solar C. is based on the Lunar C., due to the fact that the Solar C. has months” (and even this is a misconstrued assumption). Yet what is not as easily recognized is that the Solar C. is based on the Lunar C. for the fact that there are 7 days in a week. A true Solar C. would have 5 days. Just something to point out to your Western friends when they sneer at the Islamic Lunar C.
I imagine a 5 day week would be chaotic: 4 days work, 1 day rest? 7 days seems ok, I think we get the best deal when it comes to work / rest. If we had 8 days, we may have to work that extra day…
When it comes to religion, and having the 7 human days correlate to the 7 days of creation…that worries me. Often people today speak as though we have always had a 7-day calendar, without knowing the history behind it. One such worrisome example is Bush initiating the idea of “intelligent design.” I think it indirectly relates to the mode of thought that there has always been a 7-day a week calendar. But here I have mentioned both religion and politics in one paragraph, which I know is not Purg’s style.
The question it comes down to, then, is “what about changing the months?”…and then, “Is it possible to fit a lunar monthly calendar (relating to the moon phases) into a solar calendar (relating to the Earth’s rotation around the sun)?” According to Wikipedia, no, because lunar calendars do not track the seasons. (We know this to be the case because we may have Ramadan occurring in the Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter.) This is difficult. The lunisolar calendar is not the answer, either.
Thus, the 24 hours / 7 days / 52 weeks or 12 months in a year that we currently follow is the best for now, but I think there could be better. As I am not a scientist / astrologer / mathematician, I cannot offer a better calendar. I do think that if someone finds a good calendar, then we should follow it. Without having to go through a nuclear holocaust first.
What I do find interesting is that the Solar Calendar (Solar C.) is based on the Lunar Calendar (Lunar C.), though many do not know it. People may initially even agree, that “Of course the Solar C. is based on the Lunar C., due to the fact that the Solar C. has months” (and even this is a misconstrued assumption). Yet what is not as easily recognized is that the Solar C. is based on the Lunar C. for the fact that there are 7 days in a week. A true Solar C. would have 5 days. Just something to point out to your Western friends when they sneer at the Islamic Lunar C.
I imagine a 5 day week would be chaotic: 4 days work, 1 day rest? 7 days seems ok, I think we get the best deal when it comes to work / rest. If we had 8 days, we may have to work that extra day…
When it comes to religion, and having the 7 human days correlate to the 7 days of creation…that worries me. Often people today speak as though we have always had a 7-day calendar, without knowing the history behind it. One such worrisome example is Bush initiating the idea of “intelligent design.” I think it indirectly relates to the mode of thought that there has always been a 7-day a week calendar. But here I have mentioned both religion and politics in one paragraph, which I know is not Purg’s style.
The question it comes down to, then, is “what about changing the months?”…and then, “Is it possible to fit a lunar monthly calendar (relating to the moon phases) into a solar calendar (relating to the Earth’s rotation around the sun)?” According to Wikipedia, no, because lunar calendars do not track the seasons. (We know this to be the case because we may have Ramadan occurring in the Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter.) This is difficult. The lunisolar calendar is not the answer, either.
Thus, the 24 hours / 7 days / 52 weeks or 12 months in a year that we currently follow is the best for now, but I think there could be better. As I am not a scientist / astrologer / mathematician, I cannot offer a better calendar. I do think that if someone finds a good calendar, then we should follow it. Without having to go through a nuclear holocaust first.
Caff, thanks for your insight, since I am food deprived need to digest this with diagrams.
The only thing that came to mind is .. hmm, this works; we would only have to wait 5 days for new episodes of lost, grey and desperate.
purgatory, what comes first the chicken or the egg?
purgy..?...purgy....?....purrrrrrrrgyyyyyy...?!!
first of all, i loved the word "calendrically"
I think that the Eastern world needs longer week-span, ten-day weeks would barely hold all the things that we put off "for another day" and then we would be able to claim that we actully did some work in a week
great post, fascinating info..thanks
I think that the Eastern world needs longer week-span, ten-day weeks would barely hold all the things that we put off "for another day" and then we would be able to claim that we actully did some work in a week
great post, fascinating info..thanks
Izzi, I come first, then everything else.