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steorran_woruldeI was talking to Maria the other day and telling her a little bit about my calendar thoughts, and she, being a student of comparative religion, asked what their worship was like. I didn't know, but together with the idea that they have divinely-given weeks, and the idea I mentioned yesterday that their ecologically-based calendar system might be preserved for ritual purposes even after they develop 4-week months, an idea came together that I think fits.
Every village has a temple, likely in the middle of the village. There is a weekly communal worship ceremony on the first day of the week. This is integrated with the system of marking ecologically-determined periods. When the observations are made and confirmed that the natural signs of a new period have started, the start of that period is ceremonially recognized at the next weekly ceremony. If the period involves the beginning of production of some kind of food (e.g., ripeness of something), some of that food is brought as a thank offering, blessed, and distributed to the people. A period of the year thus always contains an integer number of weeks.
Because of the integration of this calendar with worship and subsistence life, it does not go away when months are introduced; rather, the two systems run alongside each other.[1]
I was telling Heather all about calendar systems and the thoughts I've been developing, and she asked a good question: why do they develop a month-based system at all? Why do they bother? What advantage is it to them over a purely ecological system?
At that time, I didn't have a good answer. I think I do now. The ecological calendar is very local, and will differ from village to village. Weeks, however, run in synchrony throughout the island. Week-based months will, too, and allow different villages to plan things and synchronize events. There is still some possibility that calendars will get off from each other by different observations of a year start, though. I think this is a good reason for intercalation to be based on months rather than on years. If they intercalate weeks, some villages might end up starting a month a week ahead of or behind another village's months. If they intercalate months, in every village months will start and end at the same time, though it is still possible that their year start determinations will differ and so which month it is might differ from village to village. Since intercalation of whole months is needed fairly infrequently (around every 20 years), it may be that this is something that is determined by a whole-island council or something like that, rather than by direct local observation.
[1] For a partial precedent, compare the Attic calendar; according to Wikipedia, there were three different calendars in use simultaneously:
Every village has a temple, likely in the middle of the village. There is a weekly communal worship ceremony on the first day of the week. This is integrated with the system of marking ecologically-determined periods. When the observations are made and confirmed that the natural signs of a new period have started, the start of that period is ceremonially recognized at the next weekly ceremony. If the period involves the beginning of production of some kind of food (e.g., ripeness of something), some of that food is brought as a thank offering, blessed, and distributed to the people. A period of the year thus always contains an integer number of weeks.
Because of the integration of this calendar with worship and subsistence life, it does not go away when months are introduced; rather, the two systems run alongside each other.[1]
I was telling Heather all about calendar systems and the thoughts I've been developing, and she asked a good question: why do they develop a month-based system at all? Why do they bother? What advantage is it to them over a purely ecological system?
At that time, I didn't have a good answer. I think I do now. The ecological calendar is very local, and will differ from village to village. Weeks, however, run in synchrony throughout the island. Week-based months will, too, and allow different villages to plan things and synchronize events. There is still some possibility that calendars will get off from each other by different observations of a year start, though. I think this is a good reason for intercalation to be based on months rather than on years. If they intercalate weeks, some villages might end up starting a month a week ahead of or behind another village's months. If they intercalate months, in every village months will start and end at the same time, though it is still possible that their year start determinations will differ and so which month it is might differ from village to village. Since intercalation of whole months is needed fairly infrequently (around every 20 years), it may be that this is something that is determined by a whole-island council or something like that, rather than by direct local observation.
[1] For a partial precedent, compare the Attic calendar; according to Wikipedia, there were three different calendars in use simultaneously:
* A festival calendar of 12 months based on the cycle of the moon
* A democratic state calendar of 10 arbitrary months
* An agricultural calendar of seasons using star risings to fix points in time
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Date: 2011-08-15 08:36 am (UTC)And since months are all the same length, that doesn't even matter quite as much! The fourth day of the second week will be the fourth day of the second week everywhere else. Yay :)