[ 18 March 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

Here is the links I went to after hearing it on the news this am:

http://www.timeanddate.com/news/holidays/early-easter-2008.html

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Originally posted by remind:
Going by the Gregorian Calendar MSpector? But I agree it is because of our calendar errors. Too bad we did not use the Mayan, seems they had a better handle on it than we do.

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Wow. Did the Mayans have calendar with a 365.2422 day year?

M. Spector: The early Easter is once in a lifetime. It'll be the 22nd century before we have one this early again.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
It's only "once in a lifetime" if you die within the next four years.

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:
Wow. Did the Mayans have calendar with a 365.2422 day year?

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Although there were only 365 days in the Haab year, the Mayas were aware that a year is slightly longer than 365 days, and in fact, many of the month-names are associated with the seasons; Yaxkin, for example, means "new or strong sun" and, at the beginning of the Long Count, 1 Yaxkin was the day after the winter solstice, when the sun starts to shine for a longer period of time and higher in the sky. When the Long Count was put into motion, it was started at 7.13.0.0.0, and 0 Yaxkin corresponded with Midwinter Day, as it did at 13.0.0.0.0 back in 3114 B.C.E. The available evidence indicates that the Mayas estimated that a 365-day year precessed through all the seasons twice in 7.13.0.0.0 or 1,101,600 days.

We can therefore derive a value for the Mayan estimate of the year by dividing 1,101,600 by 365, subtracting 2, and taking that number and dividing 1,101,600 by the result, which gives us an answer of 365.242036 days, which is slightly more accurate than the 365.2425 days of the Gregorian calendar.

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http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-mayan.html

[ 18 March 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

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We can therefore derive a value for the Mayan estimate of the year by dividing 1,101,600 by 365, subtracting 2, and taking that number and dividing 1,101,600 by the result, which gives us an answer of 365.242036 days, which is slightly more accurate than the 365.2425 days of the Gregorian calendar.

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Great page. Thanks, remind.

And your welcome for the link, Chichen Itza is interesting, including the observatory and ball court. The Mayans were highly advanced peoples, not only in construction, astronomy, accustics and mathematics, but they also knew how to process raw materials and make them into other substances, as well as being advanced farmers and traders with a written language.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ancientobs/chichen/

[ 18 March 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

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Although they didn't really have an accurate calendar year -- their year was 365 days long. It's just the way their hellishly complex calendar system worked, it may indicate that they had calculated a more accurate length.

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It's simpler than you'd think... Our calendar of 30 days has september, april, june, and november isn't exactly a simplistic model either... The 7 day week is so engrained within us, to an outsider it'd be just as strange as the Mayan system is to us.

It has a very clear advantage in that any given day in a year would always occur on the same day of the week, so we would have fixed dates for things like statutory holiday days off (except Good Friday). US election day would always be on the same day too.

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Originally posted by remind:
Well, it would not be the Gregorian calendar then would it? And until we do adopt it, the Mayans remains the most accurate today.

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As mentioned, they didn't really use an accurate calendar, even if they had a good approximation of the actual solar year length. It seems a bit strange that an agrarian society wouldn't improve their calendar year, in order to be able to use it as a consistent guide for planting and harvesting.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
The 7-day week existed centuries before the Gregorian calendar, and was a feature of the Julian calendar.

When did we ever have "2 unique calendar configurations"?

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I may be wrong about the 2 unique configurations, but the Romans used the Imperial Nundinal cycle. The 7-day week was only officially adopted when Constantine was in power.

ETA: I'm finding sources that seem to imply the 7-day week was used informally long before the Christians influenced it, and the Nundinal cycle was already out of use by the time the 7-day week was officially adopted. So maybe I can't directly fault religion for the poor calendar design.

[ 18 March 2008: Message edited by: Proaxiom ]

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Originally posted by remind:
What do you mean a non-weekday? As in those days would cease to exist? And I hear you on, the 7 day week nonsense.

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Not a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. You could call it Nonday. So you'd have Saturday December 30, then Nonday December 31, then Sunday January 1.

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The seven-day week was overlaid on the calendar for religious reasons, thus making it stupidly more complicated than it had previously been (we moved from 2 unique calendar configurations to 14 unique configurations). Just one more thing organized religion had to come along and ruin.

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I beleive the pre-julian (Nundinal as you call it) had an 8 day week, atleast an 8 day market week... The 7 week calendar came later on. Definately right that it's based on religious reasons.

If you go back futher (babylonian and earlier), the calendar was based on 12 (6*2 to be more accurate... Based on 6 males and 6 female gods). We see the echo's of it today in our time and geometry... 12 hours * 2 per day, 60 minutes (6 * 2 * 5... 5 being the number of fingers on our hand, they used a base 60 numbering system)m and same with the 60 seconds.

It's the same numbering system that gives us 360 degrees in a circle (or our own planet, 'north of 60' for example).

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:
I have suggested we make December 31 a non-weekday, so that so that the days of the week skip over it. That way December 30 would be a Saturday and January 1 would be a Sunday. February 29 would also be a non-weekday.

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As for holidays, most of the world's religious holidays are scheduled without regard to the Gregorian calendar. Even christian Easter would move about because it's based in part on phases of the moon.

And there are downsides to your proposal to have each date occur the same day of the week every year. People born on Mother's Day or Super Bowl Sunday or Thanksgiving Day would always have their birthdays overshadowed by those events. Many fixed-date holidays, like July 1, July 4, July 26, etc. would be stuck on whatever weekday they happened to be assigned by the "new" calendar. It's OK if July 1 is a Friday but what if it were on a Wednesday every year? What if St. Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday every year? What if April Fools Day always falls on a school-day?

[ 19 March 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]