Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Off Topic => Topic started by: goodsamaritan on January 30, 2014, 10:38:55 pm
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The Chinese started making calendars more than 4,000 years ago. They relied more on the moon then because the sun (earth's solar orbit) was not very reliable yet at that time. Eventually when the Earth's solar orbit stabilized more, adjustments were made for the Chinese calendar to be Lunar - Solar. By 1912, the Gregorian calendar was stable enough for China to use it as the official national calendar.
If humans had been "human" for at least 200,000 years, how come our oldest reliable (Chinese) calendar is only some 4,000 years old? Something to think about.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 Everyone!
Kung Hei Fat Choi!
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You can be certain that palaeo peoples had calendars too, of a sort. I have seen various rock engravings which were of an astronomical nature and many thousands of years old, so I am sure that "non-civilised" palaeo tribes also were able to calculate such things.
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Old physical calendars fit several general purposes: mainly planting cycles, religious observance based on the mythology that grew from nature's cycles, and reference dates for history of each ruler's important life events and their dynasties' reigns.
But don't forget, even before these inscribed calendars came into existence, celestial events were observed with notches in rocks or notches where mountains form peaks or Vs. Everything in nature has an observable cycle. Seasons, seasonal rains and flooding, dry periods, ripening of foods, animal birthing and migrations, sun and moon cycles, positions of constellations; all these make cycles for all beings to observe.
I would say that nature developed the calendar, we just notice it, quantify it, and live our lives by it in useful (and meaningless) ways.