Earth Once Existed Worlds That Fit In A Separate Region Of Space-Time
In today’s post, we’re going to learn about the evolution of calendars, knowing that even something as basic as the sense of time we’re getting is relatively recent.
When watching commercial films with historical elements, we should prepare like we are watching Marvel movies or fantasy movies in general, because what they have in common is that the amount of facts that are true to reality is small and plays a minor role. Even so, perhaps it is inevitable that the view of the past is distorted. They make the viewer see a simple and friendly history, because the whole thing is understood from the viewpoint of modern screenwriters, close to the point of view of modern people. To define precisely, but at length, it can be called as movies-reflecting-view-point of modern people-like-so-many-other-normal-movies-out-there-but-with-a-theme-of-fictional-past.
The problem with historical films is not that they misrepresent, like creating stereotypes about Vikings wearing horned helmets, but that they don’t represent anything at all. In fact, historical re-enactment is a complex subject that is difficult even for academia, even when the gaps have been filled with narrative elements that are difficult to verify. The histories presented by humanists are also often strange, complex, and seemingly difficult to accept, because they are often outside the lens we use to see the world, and are expressed through ways that have long disappeared. As a hypothetical of early life, in communities living together, cross-sex sharing among members is a way to strengthen relationships and monogamous commitment didn’t exist [1] .
The difference lies not only in those few such activities, but is almost identical in every aspect, a little in each place. If you travel to the past, chances are you won’t be able to survive, like being lost on the island with Australian Aboriginal people, instead of becoming the smartest person like in those movies inspired by similar ideas. Globalization and the homogenization of the present world (and not to mention the influence of films made by Westerners with a relatively unified lens) have created a huge illusion that people are the same across space and time. But you may soon feel lacking, when watching movies that were made in the mid-20th century and can’t bring yourself to watch them, or reading a poem a few hundred years back and not understanding anything. The further we go, the more imaginary the past worlds we imagine are, and the way we imagine them is not random, it is based on a perspective built by notions of the world we are living in.
In today’s post, we’re going to learn about the evolution of calendars, knowing that even something as basic as the sense of time we’re getting is relatively recent.
1. Isolated regions of space-time.
In the past, people used to think that the end of the world was the end of the borders of the country they lived in, or later extended to the neighboring regions through trade and stories, but still could not have the full visual as how modern people view Earth’s photo taken from the ISS space station, with nearly every corner already covered with human exploration footprints as in the documentary films of BBC. Most of the time, the world people envisioned was a flat, floating disk at the center of the universe (and some people still believe that). The oceans were filled with monsters, and America or Australia was seen as non-existent. However, since humans are not often migratory species, especially in the pre-industrial world, the breadth of the world is only a matter of narratives, and most people are mostly settled around limited geographical areas — and that was already very large because travel plans largely revolved around walking and riding horses. 10km took 2 hours to walk, man’s sense of space at that time was of course different from modern humans who can travel 1500km by plane with the same amount of time.
But spatial isolation is not enough to create a homogeneous mass for a group of people, especially in the image of a nation or ethnic. The Vietnamese who live near the Cambodian border, know the Khmer language and partly understand their culture, do not therefore feel them closer than people from Hai Phong. Therefore, the structure of the world beside space needs to be supported by time. You’d probably say “it should be culture”, but when we talk about time, we’re talking about a lot of culture, with a series of occasions, events and visualizations of past and future in a streamline thread. That is, we feel alienated from Cambodians even though we live next to them, partly because their vision of the past and aspirations for the future are different from our own, because we live in two different timelines. On a smaller scale, the power of time is also evident in businesses or families, with members’ cohesion built by sharing a past and looking forward to a unified future.
Seeing the great power of time, nations and dynasties in the past, in addition to creating a border, also created a timescale of their own. They do not use a unified calendar, not even a calendar based on the numerical method, but based on important national events. For example, from the beginning of recorded history until the end of the 4th century BC, the passage of time is marked by only three ways: important events, the annual tenure of government office or life cycle of dynasties [2] .
In terms of prominent events, in ancient Mesopotamia, a particular year was defined by a most important event that took place every 12 months. For example, “in the year when King Naram-Sin came to the upstream of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers” or “when King Enlil-bani made three massive bronze statues of the god Ninurta.” By defining the term of office, one would have years such as “the year when ‘some’ elite Athenian was magistrate”. The last method, also the most common way, is counted by the year of the throne of the head, such as “the 3rd year of Alexander the Great”, “the 30th year of King Nebuchadnezzar II”… [3] .
The problem with these systems is that they are based on local events, and there aren’t any rules or systems for aligning one country’s calendar with another, so the perception is also localized. Thus, to identify a transnational event, such as the battle between Athens and Sparta in the second half of the 5th century BC, the historian Thucydides wrote like this:
“The ‘Thirty Years’ Peace’, which was entered into after the conquest of Euboea, lasted 14 years; in the 15th year, in the 48th year of the priesthood of Chrysis at Argos, and when Aenesias was magistrate at Sparta, and there still being two months left of the magistracy of Pythodorus at Athens, six months after the battle of Potidaea, and at the beginning of spring, a Theban force a little over 300 strong … at about the first watch of the night made an armed entry into Plataea, a Boeotian town in alliance with Athens.”
He had to refer to various timeframes to describe the date that we know as “The Year 431 BC” [4] .
The ancient nations retained a local timeframe for a reason, as it was more than just a regular date counter. It establishes a nation unified in thought. The calendar of each country is a political tool, involved in a wide range of state, religious, civil, and military activities. For example, during Alexander the Great’s first year in office, all the old administrative records needed to be revised based on the new calendar counting the reigns of the new king, leading to a rise in interest of the masses with time. Getting used to the new calendar is imperative, because in order to report a lost pig, or to organize a daughter’s wedding, or to send a letter to a friend… since the new emperor ascended the throne, Macedonian citizens had to get used to counting according to the new calendar. The profound changes in the administrative structure of the nation would gradually trickle down and create a complete picture of a dynasty separate from not only neighboring states, but also other dynasties before it. When invading each other, the winning nation often imposes a new calendar on the land it has just occupied, and over time, without any systems or rules, people will gradually become unable to relate and compare with the calendar of the old dynasty, the timeline is therefore somewhat broken.
A Macedonian citizen who has been captured by another country for half a lifetime, when released back to their former country, may no longer be able to recognize the present moment, because most events used for dating at the present are things they did not experience nor have any connection with their lives. A similar sense of heaviness befalls those who have been stripped of the calendars that have been associated with most of their lives, and imposed a new set of calendars that are predicated on the events of strangers.
It can be said that people and countries in the past are well wrapped within a time frame of their own. There, the past and the future are less uncertain because people share similar events. The first year, the second year… then the thirtieth year of some king. The future seems closer now, and the past is all too familiar. Children born at a new age don’t have to worry too much about the events of the previous era, because in reality it is also difficult to remember because the timelines for them to cling to are too complicated and not intuitive.
But these ancient villages are soon torn apart by a unified time system, and it pushes people’s minds into a greater flow, in a larger world.
2. The unification of time
After the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon in 323 BC, chaos broke out and everything began to change. During the turmoil of Macedonia, the Seleucids established a new empire that stretched from Bulgaria to Afghanistan (in present-day territory) and introduced a new system of time, which later came to be known as the “Seleucid Era”. With a reign spanning nearly two centuries, over a vast territory, the Seleucid created the first continuous counting calendar and spread it to a large number of ancient populations. Year 1 begins to be counted from when the Seleucid entered Babylon in the spring of 311 BC, and so on adding 1 each year. After his death, his son or subsequent generations did not reset the clock as was common practice at the time. This is the first time in human history, time is determined in a continuous manner without interruption, reverse or recount; also no longer determined by the term of office of the ruler, not anchored by the name of a sitting king, and the counter moves further and further away from the starting line.
This unification has brought about many changes. First, it heralded a new possibility, and laid the foundation for later periods of time unification, including the Common Era we now use. Second, it pushes the ancients to a new, more seamless and less closed world; helps them project their minds further in two directions, both past and future, and makes it easier to link events that are correlated over a long period of time. At that time, because it was closely tied to a calendar determined based on the royal life cycle (which was at high risk of being replaced), and empires continued to grow and decline, the popular notion of people is that time moves in a circular pattern — perhaps part of the reason comes from people’s minds have trouble figuring out how to connect their time with the past and future seamlessly. Coincidentally, monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Christianity, in addition to having a different conception from antiquity, hold that time is linear with a beginning and an end; they are also religions that were later inspired by the Seleucids and created their own seamless calendars that last until today. It is worth mentioning that the doomsday predictions did not appear before the advent of the Seleucid calendar, nor did they appear outside the territory of the Seleucid Empire while it was still in existence.
But the dawn of time unification isn’t easy like “oh, I got an idea,” and then everyone chimes in.
First we have to mention the Seleucid Empire and its historical role. Why didn’t the Greeks create their own seamless calendar even though they had previously owned a large area, but later it was them who did it on the land they captured from Babylon? This is thanks to the Mesopotamian system of mathematics, which developed rigorously from the time of the Sumerians until the fall of Babylon, in particular their numeral coefficients. They set the stage for the creation of a massive calendar that was purely maintained by numbers, printed on everything from money, letters, tombstones, tax receipts… These spreaded all over the Seleucid Empire. The impetus for creating a unified calendar is related to the ambition that Alexander the Great left before his death, affecting the Seleucid, was his dream of ethnic unification. Therefore, influenced by the great emperor’s wishes, combined with geographical factors, the colonial policy was applied by the Seleucids to assimilate a large land that had many ethnicities, and a set of common calendars is essential for the culture to flow.
Either way, however, the vast land of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia was a complex area both in terms of terrain and people, and was not fond of having to submit to the Greeks. Different from our mind, which is in peacetime and used to a unified time system, the ancient inhabitants were used to being surrounded by separate time, so resistance to the new calendar was fierce. The peoples of the Seleucid Empire, spread over a wide geographical area, had different calendars associated with their agriculture, crops, and religion. Thus, from the 2nd century BC until its total collapse in 64 BC, the empire faced increasing opposition, and increasing levels of rebellion by Mesopotamian people. This resistance was not merely to regain political or territorial status, but was closely related to their desire to escape the time system they had been imposed on by the Seleucids.
After a long period of civil war, the Seleucid Empire finally fell, their calendars stoppe, but their legacy, the idea of a unified calendar has impacted the world to this day.
3. Modern calendar.
The Jews had a close relationship with the Seleucid Empire and the Seleucid calendar. They called the period of existence under the Greeks the “Age of Contracts,” which was an economic-related term, closely related to the common calendar and currency set by the Seleucid Empire, rather than a more popular but politically forced term “Seleucid Era”. The Jews were also the group that had the most severe conflict with the Seleucid Empire later on, from being threatened with the destruction of their temples, interfering with religious activities to being outlawed. Eventually, the Jewish group in Judea marched against the court and successfully liberated Jerusalem, creating an independent state called Hasmonean — present-day Israel [5] .
But perhaps that wasn’t enough, in Book of Daniel, about a noble Jew exiled in Babylon (before Alexander the Great), said to have been written during a period of military conflict between the Jews and the Seleucids (since historical events prior to this milestone are correct, while historical events after this are severely erroneous), the Seleucids were cast as villains. In this apocalyptic book, Daniel narrates the entire history (which in the context of the book is a prediction of the future for king Nebuchadnezzar), the rise and fall of Babylon, the arrival of Alexander The Great, Babylon’s fall to Alexander, the founding of the Seleucid Empire, crimes against God by “soldiers of the Northern king” (implied on Seleucid reign and their temple-burning behavior in Jerusalem, the Northern king in mention is Alexander) and finally the war that led to the apocalypse there. Here’s the interesting passage: the end of the Seleucid Empire is also identified as the apocalypse, and after that, the world continues to exist with a few chosen people [6] .
Although the end of the Seleucids is not the end of humanity as predicted, this is a milestone marking the strong development of monotheistic religions, and these religions also contributed greatly to the creation of a popular calendar with many users. Both Jews and Christians have infinite-counting calendars, inspired by the Seleucid calendar, of which the Gregorian calendar is the one we are using — the most popular time measurement system now. A week has 7 days representing 7 days of God spent to create the world, Sunday is the Lord’s day, the time is determined to start with the AD milestone (the time Jesus was born), the holiday Christmas and New Year… are all traces of Christianity. The rapid spread of this religion, and its links with colonialism and later imperialism, contributed to its emergence as an international system.
However, the Gregorian calendar also experienced many objections throughout history, before becoming the most popular system. Most sensitive is the opposition of other religions, such as the Evangelical Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. So, at first it was only accepted by the pro-Christian European nations like Spain, Portugal, France in 1582… Then hundreds of years later, slowly and without synchronicity, one nation after another. Other major European countries who first rejected it, began to gradually apply it (the last one was Greece in 1923), and then spread it around the world during the colonial/imperial period, in colonies like the US or Asian and African countries. However, the majority Muslim countries have yet to accept this type of calendar, other than Saudi Arabia in 2016 (which had a pro-European government which change the calendar in the past, but they ended up with ill fate and the Muslim calendar was reinstated after that government was abolished). Other countries in Asia still maintain the use of a parallel calendar to measure almost all important cultural events, such as Vietnam, China… [7]
The French in 1793, after the revolution, also created their own calendar with a week of 10 days, but only kept it for 12 years. In general, the Gregorian calendar has many advantages, the biggest advantage of which is that it is widely used by many people, thanks to the expansion of Christianity and the European colonial period in the pre-modern period. However, it’s not perfect. Knowing that the calendar was not originally created to optimize our life, but to ensure that the date of Easter was not too far back from the vernal equinox due to deviations from the Julian calendar (the calendar set by the Dictator Caesar) [8] .
At a later stage, with the rise of science and capitalism, along with the decline of religions, many proposed improvements to the Gregorian calendar, such as synchronizing the number of days of the month, ensuring that things fall on the same days (for example, Thursday will always fall on the 15th of the month), or even calculate so that all holidays fall on the weekend to… cutting cost by reducing the amount of people’s days off. These proposals are often related to capitalism issues, especially cost savings, such as helping capitalists plan better, making financial reporting easier, creating a synchronization between the weeks of the month, months of the year, and between years. However, they were not accepted, even criticized for being too pragmatic. The ubiquity of the current calendar also makes changes difficult, as it serves as a worldwide sync, so while not the most efficient system, nor that it is without an alternative, the provisional Gregorian calendar remains the world’s most popular general time scale.
Maybe we will change the calendar again in the future. But history has shown that this change is rarely associated with peace or treaty, and always affects the face of the world in a profound way; partly because it is always clearly associated with religious and political motives.
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References:
*This article is mostly based on “A revolution in time” by Paul J Kosmin, published on Aeon.co
[1] Ryan, C., & Jethá, C. (2010). Sex at dawn: The prehistoric origins of modern sexuality. New York: Harper.
[2], [3], [4] P. J. Kosmin, “A revolution in time,” Aeon, May 07, 2019. https://aeon.co/.../when-time-became-regular-and... (accessed Jun. 15, 2021).
[5] History.com Editors, “Jerusalem,” HISTORY, Aug. 23, 2017. https://www.history.com/.../ancient.../history-of-jerusalem (accessed Jun. 15, 2021).
[6] Wikipedia Contributors, “Book of Daniel,” Wikipedia, Jun. 06, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Daniel (accessed Jun. 15, 2021).
[7], [8] “The Geopolitics of the Gregorian Calendar,” Stratfor, 2020. https://worldview.stratfor.com/.../geopolitics-gregorian... (accessed Jun. 15, 2021).
