Talk:History of calendars

Lead

This article frankly doesn't look bad except for the lead and the end. Some more coverage of the history of the calendar in Asia/Africa would be nice, and of course the prose needs some work, but overall, this doesn't look all that far from FA, and actually already fairly close to GA. Does anyone want to write that lead? If not, I'll do so. Nousernamesleft (talk) 17:41, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Where is Asia?

This article definitely does not provide a worldwide view. There is nothing about Asia. Can someone please fix it? --125.238.145.249 (talk) 01:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Patience. This is a current T-squad collaboration, but I haven't found any time to work on it of late. Soon I should, however. Nousernamesleft (talk) 00:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

This seems weird

In the middle of the mayan calendar section, the article begins discussing roman and athenian calendars. It seems very odd and like something important has been edited out or moved to the wrong place. For reference, it's the bit that starts with "The intercalary month usually came after Poseidon" and goes through the end of that section of the article. I have no intention of fixing it myself, as I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so, but it does seem like it should be brought to the attention of those editing this article.

Please don't take the above statement in an adversarial way, I'm just pointing it out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.67.113.208 (talk) 21:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

To-do

• Verify and format each of the references, one by one. Most of them look like they're reliable and already correctly formatted, but one can never be too sure. Never mind, I see several undoubtedly unreliable references being overused. Sigh... a lot of work ahead of me.
• Research and write the section on modern calendars; specifically the Gregorian.
• Add a third paragraph to the lead summarizing the section in the point above.
• Globalize the article. Add bits on Asia and Africa, specifically.

Nousernamesleft (talk) 20:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

• Brush up the prose.
• Peer review.
• Clean up any remaining MOS errors.
• FAC.

I'm not going to bother with GAN; I don't really see the point of GA except in introducing new editors who probably can't quite handle FA yet to quality article processes. Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:01, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

• groan*. Six of the web sources are unreliable. I've gotten rid of all of them and replaced them with {{fact}} tags. I wish people would just check whether a reference was reliable when writing an article. Nousernamesleft (talk) 00:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Egypt???

I'm pretty sure Ancient Egyptians developed a 365-day calendar as well... However, I'm not an expert of the history of timekeeping. Would someone verify me? Jonathansuh (talk) 04:16, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

They, like virtually everyone else in the world, had a 360-day calendar from at least the 15th century B.C.E. up until around the 7th century B.C.E., when they added 5 days. They, like the Mayans and other peoples (all of whom added those same 5 days around the same century), considered these "days of nothing" in which no business was conducted, etc. Modern "scholars" assume that all of these varied people's were idiots, incapable of determining the true length of the year, as opposed to entertaining even the possibility that the year was indeed shorter, and that celestial events occurred which changed its length to what we presently experience. We prefer to throw out the baby with the bathwater by assuming that ancient stories of "gods" like Mars and Venus "waging war on the earth", or Isaiah's recounting of calamitous events, are merely "flowery language" and thus couldn't have been reporting actual events. I could describe a television as a magic box created by the gods to enable humans to see distant events, but my "flowery language" would in no way invalidate the existence of television sets. This article is inadequate, to say the least. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.58.148.252 (talk) 12:15, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Lunar Calendars

There should be a short section on lunar calendars and a reference to the lunar calendar page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_calendar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mil112 (talk • contribs) 19:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Hebraic / Jewish Calendars ?!?!

this seems to be a glaring omission as well. not only is the asian calendars missing but the only modern calendars ar Bahai and Gregorian??? What are the proper steps to make sure this an accurate page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sastian (talk • contribs) 15:28, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Chronological vs Geographic Organization

I think that a chronological organization would be more useful than a geographical one. Either would be better than the current hybrid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.54.67.40 (talk) 15:02, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Ex: Paragraph 2 is chronological (Prehistory), Paragraph 3 is both chronological and geographical (Ancient Near East), Paragraph 4 is chronological (Antiquity), but then subdivided geographically, Paragraph 5 is organized the same as 4, Paragraph 6 is geographical (Mesoamerica), as is Paragraph 7 (Modern). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.54.67.40 (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect claim of Khayyam's achievement

Two places in the article it is mentioned that Khayyam measured the length of the year to 365.24219858156 days. There doesn't seem to be any historical source for this claim, the source is a website with no further reference. The excellent paper A concise review of the Iranian calendar by astrophysicist Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri at Observatoire de Paris refers to this claim on page 11:

"Note that recently an extremely precise value for the duration of the year (365.24219858156 days) has been attributed to Khayyâm (O'Connor & Robertson 1999), although it is supported by no historical source, as far as we know. We think that this may be a spurious value resulting from the erroneous 2820-year cycle suggested recently (see below Section 7)."

That's not to say that Khayyam's measurement was not remarkable or important. The preceding text explains much better his achievement:

"The length of the year in the Iranian calendar, as conceived by Khayyâm et al., is 365.2424.. days (Youschkevitch & Rosenfeld 1973), a logical consequence of the intercalation system: 365 + 8 / 33 = 365.2424.. (see Section 5). This is in good agreement with the length of the year at his time, 365.2423 days. Khayyâm's estimate of the year length agrees even better with the present-day mean value of 365.2424 days. Compared to the Gregorian year of 365 + 1 / 4 - 1 / 100 + 1 / 400 = 365 + 97 / 400 = 365.2425 days, Khayyâm's value was based on a more accurate knowledge of the solar annual motion."

I propose that the article is edited to reflect this, if the editors agree.

--Joakims (talk) 15:54, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The number "365.24219858156" is based on a calendar which has 2137 regular years of 365 days and 683 leap years of 366 days in a 2820 year cycle. (Of course Omar Khayyam didn't "measure" the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days -- that number contains way too many digits for a 1079 A.D. observation.) See my 2011 comment at Talk:Omar_Khayyám/Archive 2#Year length... AnonMoos (talk) 18:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually

The earliest calendar is the one in Torah. Shalom you are loved 166.205.101.62 (talk) 16:15, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Torah uses an ancient calendar, but there were older ones. Ann O'Dine (talk) 19:43, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

This article requires some major revisions

As previously noted by other authors, this article necessitates a significant re-organization. I will commence drafting a chronologically ordered re-structured version of this article and will provide updates upon completion Officialangrydub (talk) 15:36, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Winter count

Can someone link the Winter count ? Thanks.