What were the definitions of a day, a month and a year for our ancestors?
Answers
Answer:
Our ancestors noticed that many events in nature repeat themselves after definite intervals of time. The time between one sunrise and the next was called a day. Similarly, a month was measured from one new moon to the next. A year was fixed as the time taken by the earth to complete one revolution of the sun
Answer:It depends on the culture, and how far back we go. It is virtually impossible to measure the length of the year or calculate the solstices and equinoxes without some mathematical sophistication. The earliest calendars were lunar, and the ancients knew that roughly 12 lunar months passed from snowfall to snowfall, or from flooding to flooding, or from rainy season to rainy season, etc. The more savvy people observed that the days grew shorter in winter and longer in summer, and with the help of a fixed pole or standing megalith, they were able to mark the solstices to within a few days, giving them a pretty good idea of the true length of the year.
But the more important clues to the time of year were the fixed stars along the ecliptic. If you watch the stars just before sunrise each morning, you will notice that the starts on the horizon drift throughout the year, returning to their former position once a year. Ancient civilizations, working from the idea of 12 lunar months per year, divided the ecliptic into 12 constellations. The edge of the constellation that appeared on the horizon before sunrise was the constellation where the sun resided for that particular month. So, if you wanted to know what time of year it was, you just watched the horizon on a clear morning to see what constellation was rising.
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