Towards the end of the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII established a commission to examine the subject of the calendar. The committee established by Gregorius presented a precise and effective solution, even if it is not really simple, that we use to this day
as we have seen in the first part of the article, the lack of synchronization between the solar year and the lunar year, and the inaccuracy of the moon's orbit around the earth and the earth's orbit around the sun caused a terrible 'headache' for the tribal elders and priests in almost every culture and culture in the world. Those who tried to use the moon to count months found themselves with a year too short by about a week and a half. And those who tried to count the days of a 'solar year' had to make do with an inaccurate calendar. A way had to be invented to count months while ignoring the moon, which supposedly gives such clear signs for measuring time.
Towards the end of the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII established a commission to examine the subject of the calendar. The committee established by Gregorius presented a precise and effective solution, even if it is not really simple, that we use to this day. In an unprecedented way, in 1582, ten days were deleted from the calendar, to adjust the resulting deviation to the state of the sun and nature
This is a great opportunity to discuss the history of the Gregorian calendar, which is currently used in the Western world. Julius Caesar developed the Julian calendar that is named after him. The Julian calendar replaced the Roman calendar that was used before throughout the Roman Empire and was a lunar calendar, with only 355 days. According to the Julian calendar the years were calculated as exactly 365 days and a quarter, by counting 365 days in a year and adding one day every four years (leap year). But as mentioned, the length of a 'solar year' is a little more than 365 and a quarter days. There are still about eleven minutes and fourteen seconds of the year that remain unanswered. It sounds insignificant, but it is about seven days every thousand years. Since European society attached great importance to dates such as the twenty-first of March, which is the spring equinox, and since the calendar moved further and further away from this day and other important dates over the centuries, the Vatican was required to find a solution to the matter.
Towards the end of the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII established a commission to examine the subject of the calendar. The committee established by Gregorius presented a precise and effective solution, even if it is not really simple, that we use to this day. In an unprecedented way, in 1582, ten days were deleted from the calendar, to adjust the resulting deviation to the state of the sun and nature. Think about the logistical nightmare involved (tax collection, time calculations for transporting goods, agricultural calculations, etc.), and the fact that the new calendar had to be applied all over Europe, which was divided into many kingdoms, principalities and tribes in those days. The English, for example, saw the new calendar as a papal conspiracy and continued to use the old Julian calendar until 1752, but by then an additional day had already been added, so that they had to omit not 10 but 11 days from the calendar. Russia only adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, and the Eastern Orthodox Church has not come to terms with the Gregorian calendar to this day.
Gregorius indeed resolved by erasing the dates the deviation in the calendar that had accumulated up to that date, but he also had to create an accurate calendar from now on. For this purpose, it was decided to have a leap year once every 4 years (February 29), as was customary in the Julian system, and in order to add precision to take care of those 11 missing minutes each year, it was decided to omit the leap year within the limits of a hundred, once every hundred years, but to return them within the limits A hundred that divides into 400 without a remainder. It sounds complicated, but this is the Gregorian calendar that almost all of us use today. It still leaves a certain inaccuracy - one day every 2,800 years, but it is accurate enough for most of the needs of humans today.
Exotic time calculations
We should not forget that the Gregorian calendar is not the only way to calculate time. Almost all human societies, wherever they are, have developed one method or another for calculating time, and as far as we know, this has been the case since prehistoric times. Here are some interesting examples of different calculations for the passage of time among different cultures:
The Barasna tribe is a tiny tribe that currently numbers only about 300 people and lives in the Amazon forests in Brazil. They tend to see the passage of time in a completely different way than we do. Their religion holds that the spiritual world exists alongside the real world. Instead of tracking the position of the sun or the moon, they track the passage of time through, among other things, a constellation they call the "Jaguar Caterpillar" (the same constellation is known in the Western world as the 'Scorpio' group, which shows that different cultures adopted similar ideas, but called them by different names ). The people of the Barsana tribe live in a tropical area and the seasons are hardly felt there, so they found another creative solution to measure time.
At the time when the constellation "Jaguar caterpillar" appears higher and higher in the sky, the butterflies and moths multiply, and their larvae hatch and go out to look for food. The members of the tribe believe that the "jaguar caterpillar" is the 'father' of all caterpillars and is directly responsible for the increase in their number. The direct connection between the number of larvae and the appearance of the star system, or in other words the connection between the spiritual world and the real world, proves to be constant year after year. In the eyes of the people of the Barsana tribe, this is something almost scientific - cause and effect. These methods of calculating time are essential to find food sources and survive in the harsh environment in which the people of this tribe live.
Another example can be found in the Mursi tribe in southwestern Ethiopia. This tribe has been combining traditional agriculture and nomadic life for thousands of years. They plant plants and migrate from the river banks to the depths of the forest at regular times. The people of the tribe do not have an accurate calendar in the conventional sense. They do calculate the calendar by the lunar cycles, but they count 13 lunar cycles and not 12 and adjust the dates through observations. In other words, they know roughly what the date is, but the date is adjusted to nature. The elders of the tribe carefully observe when certain flowers bloom, when birds of a certain species begin to migrate and through these and other observations make adjustments to maintain accuracy in their calendar. They follow not only the moon, but also certain stars, and when these stars 'set' (according to their belief, the stars melt because they set with the sun), that is, appear lower and lower in the sky until they disappear from sight, they know that the river is going to be Flooded and that it's time to wander.
They count the time by counting 'Bergu' (Bergu) - something that can be seen as a month according to the appearance of the moon, but as mentioned this is not accurate. They do know, for example, that in Bargo one they plant the plants and in Bargo eight heavy rains arrive, but no one knows exactly what the Bargo is saying at the moment, because it depends on the state of the surrounding nature. They use dates to indicate past or future events, but do not have an exact date for the present.
A different method of measuring time can be found in the Hopi tribe (Hopi) - Native Americans who live in today's Arizona. The Hopi people developed an accurate method of dating by using the landscape route. The calendar they developed reaches quite impressive levels of accuracy, although they still deviate from the exact solar year by about two or three days a year. According to their tradition, they are at the center of the world (as we know, they are not the only ones who have developed such thinking). They watched each day as the sun set behind the mountains in the distance, and measured time by the position where the sun set on the horizon. For example, when the sun set at the top of one mountain, the elders of the tribe knew that the date was December 17th. A different mountain peak pointed to a different date, and so it was possible to tell what the exact date was each day by the position of the sun at sunset. The Hopi had a complex cycle of rituals according to which traditional dances, races, religious ceremonies and more were performed on the various dates, all in order to maintain the stability of the world and ensure that the rain would arrive on time.
More on: And the weather forecast with the help of science or... spider webs
Richard Dawkins coined the term "Meme" in his revolutionary and famous book - "The Selfish Garden". A meme is a unit of information that replicates in a non-biological way. For example, a joke is a type of meme. If the joke is not funny, no one will tell it and it will disappear from human memory. But if the joke is successful, it will pass by word of mouth, and since people don't tell the joke word for word, it will also undergo changes from time to time. If the changes are even funnier, the change will catch on and become part of the joke and so on. So, in fact, there is a different kind of evolution here - an evolution of ideas and information. Measuring time is also a kind of meme - different cultures have developed different methods, with the best ideas surviving and passing from generation to generation and from one culture to another while accumulating changes and improvements over time. The end result as of today is a combination of many, many different ideas that developed in different places across the Old World. The next time you look at the date remember these silent testimonies to all those ancient civilizations that have mostly already disappeared from the world.
Amnon Carmel is a husband A popular blog on the internet
23 תגובות
Peace,
You say "when all the Jews willingly accept one leadership and be Arabs for each other, we will feel the difference."
In the name of unity, would you be willing to accept reformist or conservative leadership over the Jewish people?
Regarding your question, is it for the better? So yes and no. Jews were involved in countless discoveries, inventions and processes that changed the face of the world for better and for worse. Jesus, Einstein, Freud, Karl Marx, Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) and countless others were Jews. You say if everything was for the best.
R.H
I am not deleting anyone from one movement or another and I am sorry if my words were interpreted that way.
The multitude of movements and currents in Judaism proves our lack of unity as in the exile.
When all the Jews willingly accept one leadership and be Arabs for each other, we will feel the difference.
Even when there were 12 tribes and each tribe had its own leader, they voluntarily accepted one equal ruling for all.
Did you agree that: "The Jewish people, as small as they are, are different and influence the whole world", for the better!!!?
Peace,
In your statement "in every corner of the world, Jews pray from the same arrangement and the same prayers in ink" you deleted about 40% of the Jewish people who belong to the Reform movement and pray from an arrangement of prayers different from the Orthodox one.
For your information, even in the Bible, several versions are recognized, with the tradition being the accepted one, but there are others.
I do agree with you that: "The Jewish people, as small as they are, are different and influence the entire world."
Have a good week - Yair
Allow me to correct you in a very essential detail because you made a big mistake,
The Torah book has not changed and will never change. It is known that a book with the slightest change or defect is rejected and shelved.
Any mistake or erasure of a part of a hundred or a thorn above the letters invalidates the entire book.
Another thing, in every corner of the world, Jews pray from the same arrangement and the exact same prayers,
The only change is in the form of pronunciation according to the different denominations. There are holy books from almost all periods
No change in wording or punctuation. It is not for nothing that the Jewish people are called "the people of the book" and there is only one book with one version
And any other book or other version is invalid from a legal point of view.
Peace
I guess you haven't studied the history of the Jewish religion. If you studied, you would know that the Tanach has more than a single version, that the prayers have been changed throughout history, that the Passover Haggadah consists of texts collected over more than a thousand years,
And many more changes that took place in religion and in the library.
good week
Well-informed answers indeed, but let me clarify something that you may not have paid attention to.
When the Jews lived in the Diaspora they did speak foreign languages but with fundamental changes.
Even in customs related to prayers, the Jews changed because different peoples adopted a similar way.
On the other hand, the holy books have not been changed even by a small comma in Judaism, unlike other religions where you can find different versions and updates from time to time.
Is there any doubt that the Jewish people, as small as they are, are different and influence the entire world?
Peace,
I will add to Yair's words. The names of the "Hebrew" months are actually names of Babylonian gods. The original Hebrew months were called Rishon, Shani, etc. The "Hebrew" script is actually Aramaic and the ancient Hebrew script (Daetz script) that appears on the shekel coin has been abandoned. The book of Daniel and parts of other books and the Talmud were written in Aramaic which was the "English" of the ancient world and the book of Maccabees was written in Greek which took the place of Aramaic. The Hasmonean kings were called Alexander and Hellene. The ultra-orthodox today dress in the clothing of Polish nobles in the 17th century.
So what exactly is stable and unchanging?
The calendar that the religious use was developed by the Babylonians and copied by the Jews who completely changed the ancient calendar created in the Land of Israel.
You can count on the Christians to change their calculations several more times and update the formulas,
As they wrote the covenant for themselves and updated it to the "new" covenant.
They are unstable like in Judaism who do not change and are faithful to the laws and the book.
Maybe because they are not based on truth?
Peace,
This is true for Islam where the holidays move throughout the year. However, Christian holidays are also fixed, for example Christmas always falls in winter. The Christian solution was achieved in a much more elegant way than the Jewish one. As it says in the article, they only added one day to February every 4 years and that's it.
R.H
The times are still arranged, for example the Israeli holidays are noted in those seasons,
Unlike the Gentile holidays that apply in different seasons due to different time calculations.
Peace,
I suggest you read a bit about the "simple" method for calculating leap years before you talk about elegant and precise. It is not at all once every three years and it creates a lot of halachic problems.
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A8_%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94
The wrangling here is beautifully complicated and very deep while the thing is so simple and convenient.
It's okay to go and look for different and different methods that are also inaccurate in the end,
But the method of Judaism that solves the problem in such a beautiful, elegant and precise way is not good enough?
What is more accurate and simple than a leap year (adding a month) once every 3 years?
The site knows why I added a second comment
WOW, losing a whole week every 1000 years!
[You are not a calendar, I am not one of 52 thousand (weeks in 1000 years), you are not the son of man, don't waste my time...].
Nice gives a lot of material only with you can put with pictures
Also evolution….
A "science" site that supports a primitive and powerful measurement method that has taken over our time.
A solar-based "religious" "pagan" calendar is used and inferior to calendars that preceded it in time.
The Christian calendar is based only on the sun, while already thousands of years ago a tribe of farmers in Ethiopia knew how to divide the year into 13 moons.
True, just like the Jewish or Mayan calendar.
It is interesting to see that according to the Hebrew counting to this day the moon is in the same position every holiday.
Natural circles and coordinated with the heavenly bodies instead of "blind faith" in the way of a power-hungry emperor or a missionary pope.
In short...don't let them work on you...the Roman Empire dominates the culture to this day..
What about this week's measurement - seven days as one unit?
For a responder who does not normally respond:
When you say something like "here is the formation of many parallel methods whose duplication is minor (from the Babylonians to the Jews, fine)" you show that at least in this sentence you see duplication between peoples as one event and not a collection of many events at the individual level.
Perhaps you know that the events are at the level of the individual, but your awareness of this is not reflected in this sentence, which is an important element of your argument.
Evolution also includes the process of mixing heredity from different sources. In fact, it is a much more common element of evolution than mutations.
This is what happens here, when in every meeting of methods a method survives in the end that implements the advantages of the previous methods and gets rid of some of their problems.
This is evolution par excellence.
No, I'm afraid you didn't understand me correctly... The legitimacy of using the idea of memes is in the idea of biological control and evolution.
It is worth reading The Selfish Gene, in order to understand the original process that passed through Dawkins' mind, which is a reduction of the genetic process to the level of the gene, to the level of the replication unit. In such a case, of course the reversal takes place at the individual level, I do not understand how my words can be understood otherwise...
In any case, notice what is happening here in contrast to the biological system:
Instead of having one 'father' that replicates many times and in the process mutations that encourage 'efficiency' will divide his descendants into different types, here we are dealing with different and unrelated sources that do not undergo any mutations in the replication process.
Therefore, there is no point in mentioning the idea of memes, since it does not mention the genetic process. It's nice to mention that it's a nice concept (and as mentioned - the old cliché that 'memes' are the most effective memes...), but there's no need for that, and if you notice in most of the cases where the concept of metaphor is used it's not appropriate - this is the origin of the habit.
It is worth reading more, in an unbiased tone, again the chapter (the least good, in my opinion) in the selfish garden, as well as in a book called 'Mematology' or something similar, which groups a number of articles by people called 'mematologists' (again, I hope I am not changing the name , the book is in English of course and I wrote my review of the phenomenon about five years ago...).
In any case, it is better not to comment further, in order not to divert attention from the nice article in itself, which surely people will want to comment on it as well. I will be fine even if this answer is accompanied by some criticism about my lack of understanding of genetics or the like, you are welcome to pour your criticism - my only request is that this criticism does not come from a lack of insight into the nature of the genetic mechanism in Dawkins' view, a lack of insight that in my opinion and unfortunately characterizes most users of the term .
Greetings to all of us
Good Day
For a responder who does not normally respond:
Successful mutations are mutations that give a higher survival rate or those that have a high probability of occurrence.
That's how it is in the gardens.
In memes it's the same.
It is not clear to me whose habit you are talking about and why, but precisely here the parable is similar to the parable.
It seems to me that what confuses you is the treatment of nations as units.
This is a wrong reference! Memes replicate in the minds of individuals. The fact that sometimes large groups of individuals can be grouped on the basis of some meme does not reduce the number of occurrences of the grouped memes.
The article is nice, but the mention of memes - as usual - does not suit the example.
The method for measuring time is not exactly the biological equivalent of genes - instead of one method being created that is duplicated many times and changing in the process, there is the creation of many parallel methods whose replication is minor (from the Babylonians to the Jews, fine), and which do not change in the process at all.
This is not a specific problem of the author of the article, it is a problem of Dawkins in his original article. The example of the Christmas carol in which one mistake takes root is also not an example of evolution, but of the same mutation that occurs time and time again regardless.
I usually don't comment, but it seems to me that there is no point in mentioning memes, and it's a shame.
WOW! Nice article! It's interesting to God and I'm very happy that there is a site like the science that centers such good articles.
Thanks to Amnon and to Idan