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steorran_woruldeThis post is for brainstorming ideas for how times smaller than a year but larger than a day could be reckoned in a blind society. It includes some ideas I'm sure I don't want to use, as well as ones I might.
Inherited months
One possibility is that they inherited a month-sized unit of time from the group they branched off from, and have maintained it, possibly with some modifications since they don't perceive the lunar cycle it was originally based on. I think this is a boring option, so I don't plan to use it.
Ecologically-based timekeeping
Ecologically-based timekeeping reckons time of year based on cues in the living environment: things like when a certain plant grows shoots, when a certain plant flowers, when a certain plant has ripe fruit, when certain birds sing, etc. There are Earth calendars that involve ecological components. Older versions of the Hebrew calendar, and the version now used by Karaite Jews, determined the beginning of the month of Aviv by whether barley was ripe; if it wasn't, an intercalary month would be added. In many languages, months of lunisolar and solar calendars have names that reflect ecology; in some cases, especially with lunisolar calendars, these could reflect an earlier ecological basis for month determination. I can imagine several variants of ecologically-based timekeeping:
Informal ecological timekeeping
Informal ecological timekeeping takes note of ecological signs, and can talk about past and future times by referring to those ecological signs. It may or may not have an established sequence of ecological periods - the period when X is ripe followed by the period when Y is ripe, etc. But it doesn't have communally formally-defined transitions from one period to another. There's no communally-recognized first day of the next ecological period.
Formal observational ecological timekeeping
This turns informal ecological timekeeping into a system. There is a fixed sequence of ecological periods; when a new one starts is determined observationally in a way that can be shared with the whole (local) community, and the beginning of a new period is communally recognized. This could be by whoever notices that the period has begun telling others and getting confirmation of their evidence. It could be that there's someone who has a ritual timekeeping position who observes the signs and declares it to the community when a new period has begun. And there are probably other ways. In this kind of system, ecological periods will differ in length from year to year, and some ecological periods of the year may be significantly longer than others.
Idealized ecological timekeeping
In this system, units of time that were once based on ecological observation are given fixed lengths, and recur at the same interval year-to-year, regardless of whether they match with ecological observations in this particular year. (Intercalation of some sort will be necessary in order to keep the year roughly synchronous with the solar year.)
The variant of these that I am most likely to use is formal observational ecological timekeeping.
Divinely-given 7-day weeks
In an old version of Domil, I worked on an assumption that 7-day weeks are divinely-given, in Domil as well as on Earth; thus, all Domil societies used a 7-day week, whatever the rest of their calendar was like (unlike Earth, in which some societies have not traditionally used a 7-day week). I am not sure if I am still going to work on that assumption, but I might. I think a calendar system based only on days, weeks, and years is still probably a bit unwieldy - it feels like you'd probably want something larger than a week. Although, if you use seasons (quarter-year seasons), and count months within each season, that might work. More likely is that they use weeks in concert with ecological timekeeping.
Co-occurring weeks of differing lengths
As mentioned in previous posts, you can get an intermediate-sized unit by having two different "weeks" that run alongside each other, such as the Akan calendar with 6-day weeks and 7-day weeks which combine to make a 42-day "month". In some of my previous workings for Domil timekeeping systems, one society used concurrent 7-day and 12-day cycles, which combine to make an 84-day cycle. If I use a variant of this system for my blind society, I will use a 7-day cycle for one of them, but I'm not sure how long I'd make the other cycle be. The larger units could function as month-like units in correspondence with an ecologically-determined year start.
"Long weeks"
Some calendars have week-like units with arbitrary numbers of days that are significantly longer than a 7-day week. The Mayan calendar has a 13-day unit and a 20-day unit, which combine to create a longer unit, but the smaller units themselves are instances of what I'd think of as "long weeks". There could be a similar sort of "long week" that could serve a month-like purpose.
Groups of weeks
Weeks (assuming 7-day here, but in principle it could be other lengths) can be grouped into larger units, which could end up approximately month-sized. I suppose a fortnight is the smallest example of this. The Igbo calendar has 4-day weeks, with 7 weeks making a 28-day month. A calendar system I was working on a long time ago for another Domil people group had 7-day weeks, with 4 weeks making a 28-day month. Either way, 13 months of 28 days each makes a 364 day year, which would need some sort of intercalation to stay on track with the solar year. A 28-day month is close to a lunar month, but a bit short, so it wouldn't stay in sync. It is tidily in sync with weeks - a given day of the month would always fall on the same day of the week (at least as long as your intercalation added weeks or months, rather than filling up the year with a day (in normal years) or two (in leap years) that were outside the weeks and months). The rough equivalence with lunar months is probably where that number of weeks came from, but obviously it's not closely tied to the lunar cycle. 28 days is also close to the typical length of a menstrual cycle. I think a calendar system that was actively based on menstrual cycles would be really tricky to arrange, but I think it's much more plausible that if you have weeks in your calendar system already, you would notice that menstrual cycles lasted about 4 weeks. And I think that could provide a basis for choosing a 4-week grouping of weeks. An added bonus is that since it roughly corresponds to a lunar month, it will also roughly correspond to a tidal month.
Tidal months
They could have months based on observations of the tides. I'm not sure if these would more likely be full months or half-months.
Inherited months
One possibility is that they inherited a month-sized unit of time from the group they branched off from, and have maintained it, possibly with some modifications since they don't perceive the lunar cycle it was originally based on. I think this is a boring option, so I don't plan to use it.
Ecologically-based timekeeping
Ecologically-based timekeeping reckons time of year based on cues in the living environment: things like when a certain plant grows shoots, when a certain plant flowers, when a certain plant has ripe fruit, when certain birds sing, etc. There are Earth calendars that involve ecological components. Older versions of the Hebrew calendar, and the version now used by Karaite Jews, determined the beginning of the month of Aviv by whether barley was ripe; if it wasn't, an intercalary month would be added. In many languages, months of lunisolar and solar calendars have names that reflect ecology; in some cases, especially with lunisolar calendars, these could reflect an earlier ecological basis for month determination. I can imagine several variants of ecologically-based timekeeping:
Informal ecological timekeeping
Informal ecological timekeeping takes note of ecological signs, and can talk about past and future times by referring to those ecological signs. It may or may not have an established sequence of ecological periods - the period when X is ripe followed by the period when Y is ripe, etc. But it doesn't have communally formally-defined transitions from one period to another. There's no communally-recognized first day of the next ecological period.
Formal observational ecological timekeeping
This turns informal ecological timekeeping into a system. There is a fixed sequence of ecological periods; when a new one starts is determined observationally in a way that can be shared with the whole (local) community, and the beginning of a new period is communally recognized. This could be by whoever notices that the period has begun telling others and getting confirmation of their evidence. It could be that there's someone who has a ritual timekeeping position who observes the signs and declares it to the community when a new period has begun. And there are probably other ways. In this kind of system, ecological periods will differ in length from year to year, and some ecological periods of the year may be significantly longer than others.
Idealized ecological timekeeping
In this system, units of time that were once based on ecological observation are given fixed lengths, and recur at the same interval year-to-year, regardless of whether they match with ecological observations in this particular year. (Intercalation of some sort will be necessary in order to keep the year roughly synchronous with the solar year.)
The variant of these that I am most likely to use is formal observational ecological timekeeping.
Divinely-given 7-day weeks
In an old version of Domil, I worked on an assumption that 7-day weeks are divinely-given, in Domil as well as on Earth; thus, all Domil societies used a 7-day week, whatever the rest of their calendar was like (unlike Earth, in which some societies have not traditionally used a 7-day week). I am not sure if I am still going to work on that assumption, but I might. I think a calendar system based only on days, weeks, and years is still probably a bit unwieldy - it feels like you'd probably want something larger than a week. Although, if you use seasons (quarter-year seasons), and count months within each season, that might work. More likely is that they use weeks in concert with ecological timekeeping.
Co-occurring weeks of differing lengths
As mentioned in previous posts, you can get an intermediate-sized unit by having two different "weeks" that run alongside each other, such as the Akan calendar with 6-day weeks and 7-day weeks which combine to make a 42-day "month". In some of my previous workings for Domil timekeeping systems, one society used concurrent 7-day and 12-day cycles, which combine to make an 84-day cycle. If I use a variant of this system for my blind society, I will use a 7-day cycle for one of them, but I'm not sure how long I'd make the other cycle be. The larger units could function as month-like units in correspondence with an ecologically-determined year start.
"Long weeks"
Some calendars have week-like units with arbitrary numbers of days that are significantly longer than a 7-day week. The Mayan calendar has a 13-day unit and a 20-day unit, which combine to create a longer unit, but the smaller units themselves are instances of what I'd think of as "long weeks". There could be a similar sort of "long week" that could serve a month-like purpose.
Groups of weeks
Weeks (assuming 7-day here, but in principle it could be other lengths) can be grouped into larger units, which could end up approximately month-sized. I suppose a fortnight is the smallest example of this. The Igbo calendar has 4-day weeks, with 7 weeks making a 28-day month. A calendar system I was working on a long time ago for another Domil people group had 7-day weeks, with 4 weeks making a 28-day month. Either way, 13 months of 28 days each makes a 364 day year, which would need some sort of intercalation to stay on track with the solar year. A 28-day month is close to a lunar month, but a bit short, so it wouldn't stay in sync. It is tidily in sync with weeks - a given day of the month would always fall on the same day of the week (at least as long as your intercalation added weeks or months, rather than filling up the year with a day (in normal years) or two (in leap years) that were outside the weeks and months). The rough equivalence with lunar months is probably where that number of weeks came from, but obviously it's not closely tied to the lunar cycle. 28 days is also close to the typical length of a menstrual cycle. I think a calendar system that was actively based on menstrual cycles would be really tricky to arrange, but I think it's much more plausible that if you have weeks in your calendar system already, you would notice that menstrual cycles lasted about 4 weeks. And I think that could provide a basis for choosing a 4-week grouping of weeks. An added bonus is that since it roughly corresponds to a lunar month, it will also roughly correspond to a tidal month.
Tidal months
They could have months based on observations of the tides. I'm not sure if these would more likely be full months or half-months.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-12 02:42 pm (UTC)