A Brief History of the Western Calendar

Time is an abstract notion. It takes a trained and smart mind to measure and arrange it into a readable calendar. We have been working on the calendar as we know it today for over one thousand years.

Introduction

Albert Einstein once said, "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." For the genius physicist, this possibility was feasible, but for ancient people, things happened at different moments. They noticed the sun going down, the star rising, the sun going up again, the birth of a child, the death of an elderly person, the plants growing and cropping, the trees changing from green to yellow, and so on.

People did not invent time; they just ordered it, gave it a name, and tried to arrange their lives around it. So, they made calendars and time machines and kept records of their most important events so that now, we would remember them. And we do, as much as we can.

The Babylonians and their calendar

The first ones to divide a year into 12 months were the Babylonians. They observed the rising of the stars, which happens before dawn. Day after day, during a year, they noticed that the sun passes the same stars at the same time. They divided the sky into 12 constellations and a period in which the sun passed a constellation became a month. The month then was divided into thirty days.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra

This nice arrangement would have worked well if not for the moon. The moon was a very important deity well venerated in many societies. The moon did not have the same cycle as the sun. We know now that the solar cycle is 30.4 days while the moon cycle is about 29.53 days. So, there is a shift of an average of a day for each successive month. The two celestial calendars needed to be corrected. There were many attempts to align the two cycles. Again, about 499 B.C., the Babylonians came up with a plan. In a period of 19 years, the third, fifth, eighth, eleventh, thirteenth, sixteenth, and nineteenth years had an extra month.

Another idea we inherited from the Babylonians was the division of a month into seven seven-day periods, each ending with an "evil day" to please the goods. The days were named after the seven planets that, unlike the stars, appeared to change position.

The division of a day into 24 hours seems to come from Egypt, but later, the Babylonians started to divide an hour into periods of 30s and 60s, which came to us as seconds and minutes. The Babylonians were very good astronomers, and their knowledge spread around the Orient and Occident, reaching China and India, Greece, and Rome.

The Romans and their calendar

When Julius Caesar changed the Roman calendar in 45 B.C., time in ancient Rome was somewhat out of control. The years before his reform were also called "the years of confusion."

Christopher Plummer as Julius Caesar

At first, Rome had a 10-month calendar that began in March. Numa, the second king of Rome, introduced 2 more months. In time, the Romans produced a 24-year cycle with about 355 days/year and leap years of 277 or 278 days, averaging 365.4 days per year in a cycle. Pretty good. But why would they change it? The reason was political. Numa also appointed the Pontiff Maximus (the great priest) to correct the calendar, adding the intercalary months when needed. The pontiffs were also involved in politics. A magistrate position in Rome lasted 1 year, so the pontiffs could make it shorter or longer, according to their interests, by adding or omitting the intercalary months.

By the time Caesar became dictator in Rome (46 B.C.), the calendar was drifting so far away that the crossing of the Rubicon did not take place on January 10, 49 B.C., but earlier in mid-autumn. He started by lengthening the year 46 B.C., introducing the month that had been missing during the " years of confusion." With the help of astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria (little is known about him), Caesar regulated the calendar: a year had 365 days, divided into 12 months, with a leap day added every 4 years to the month of February. Every year began in January, the month that magistrates took office in Rome. This is the calendar we are using today.

Later reforms of the calendar

Pope Gregory XIII

The main reform later introduced to the Julian Calendar was made by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, who decreed that October 5th, 1582, should be October 15th. This 10-day drift was meant to align the calendar year with the tropical year (a period in which the Earth completes an orbit around the Sun).

The reform also slightly corrects the leap years and the time we celebrate Easter.

    The name of the days

•             Sunday - sun's day (Latin Domenica - the day of the Lord)

•             Monday - moon's day (Italian - lunedi - they of the Moon)

•             Tuesday - the day of the Nordic warrior god Tyr (Italian - martedi - Mars' day)

•             Wednesday - the day of the god Odin (Italian - mercoledi - Mercury's day)

•             Thursday - the day of the god Thor (Italian - jovedy - Jupiter's day)

•             Friday - the day of the wife of Odin, goddess Frigg (Italian - venerdi - Venus' day)

•             Saturday - Saturn's day (Italian Sabato - from Jewish Shabbat, the seventh day)

Also from Romans we inherited the name of the months:

1.            January - from Ianus, the god of gates, beginnings and endings

2.            February - from the roman festival of Februa (purification) which took place on February 15th

3.            March - from Mars, the god of war

4.            April - from the Latin term "aperire" that means "to open"

5.            May - from Maia, the Greek goddess of fertility

6.            June - from goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter

7.            July - from the month when Julius Caesar was born

8.            August - in the honor of emperor Augustus

9.            September - from "septem", that means "seven" because originally it was the seventh month of the year

10.          October - originally the eighth month of the year

11.          November - originally the ninth month of the year

12.          December - originally the tenth month of the year

Year 0 for

•             Christians - year 0 the birth of Jesus (year 4 BC)

•             Romans - 753 BC, foundation of Rome

•             Greeks - 776 BC, the first Olympiads

•             Egyptians - 2773 BC, the introduction of the calendar

•             Chinese - 2637 BC, not sure but this is the year for the first Chinese calendar

•             Jewish - 3761 BC, the date of Creation Muslims - 622 AD, Hegira

Note: I previously published this article in a website called Hubpages. As the website changed its format, I decided to take it down and put it on my own blog. In the future, there would be other articles coming here. Stay tuned. 

Use and abuse; the status of a woman in a noble house

Like today, Middle Ages society was governed by men. And just like today, those brave, smart, and powerful men were also insecure. Their problem was adultery. They judged everybody in accordance with their own behavior. So, if they were infidels to their wives, they assumed the wives did the same.


This is a painting by Vasily Polenov that I found on Wikipedia.
 It represents a father bringing his daughter to his lord.
Look at the posture of the lord...
It looks like he is counting his sheep!

If the household of ordinary people was a little more relaxed, being a matter of economy involved (work and feed the family), the nobles’ households were very strict regarding the women physical freedom. Maybe those restrictions were coming via church, were the men were in power over “weaker souls” that could be easier seduced by other men (that could have been husbands too) and fall into sin. Women were closely watched for any sign of “deviant” behavior. If caught, or even suspected, they risk their lives. Here is what
we read in A History of Private Life:

“The first duty of the head of household was to watch over, punish, and if necessary kill his wife, sister and daughters as well as the widows and orphans of his brothers, cousins and vassals.Since females were dangerous, patriarchal power over them was reinforced. They were kept under lock and key in the most isolated part of the house: the chamber des dames (the room of the ladies, my translation from french) was not a place for seduction or amusement but a kind of prison, in which women were incarcerated because men fear them” (A History of Private Life; II, Revelation of the Medieval World; George Duby; 1988, Harvard College; p.77).

But why were women so feared? Well, for once, they were the link to an alliance. Most of the time, men did not marry a woman because they loved her or got along very well. It was because of who her daddy was. The marriages were negotiated. The more powerful the dad, the more desired the daughter.
 
Then, men had to keep that alliance alive. Even in the event of the death of the wife, if the death occurred because of infidelity, then the man risked being disgraced by his father-in-law, not speaking about the shame that came with it.
Also, some women were  feared because of what secrets they may have had, what
magical tricks they may have learned or for the seduction they could have pursued upon men.

And maybe some fears were legitimate because society devalued women, which, in return, were abused ...by men.

But unlike in medieval times, today, women have a better life (or do they?).

How did early Franks wear their hair

Clovis, second king of France (481-511).

The hair is one part of the human body that has received the most attention throughout history.
Even today, grooming our hair is a daily routine, taking anywhere from one minute to over an hour, depending on how much emphasis one puts on it.

From ancient Egyptians, who used wigs and fake beards, to 18th-century nobilities, who created skyscraping powdered wigs, the decoration of the head was beyond anyone’s imagination.

In this post, I will tell you about the hairstyle of early Franks.

Let’s start with a short description of the Frank men by  Sidoine Apollinaire (a gallo-roman writer who lived between 430 and 486 A.D.):

“They tied up their flexen or light-brown hair above their foreheads, into a kind of tuft, and then made it fall behind the head like a horse’s tail. The face was clean shaved, with the exception of two long mustaches” (Medieval Life, Paul Lacroix, Arcturus Publishing Ltd, 2011, p. 514). 

So, they used to make what we now call a ponytail on top of their heads and pair it with mustaches. However, they did not cut their hair; the longer the hair, the wealthier the person. Accordingly, the length of the hair was an indicator of one’s social status.

The kings and other nobles of the Franks wore their hair parted in the middle and falling over the shoulders, sometimes sprinkled with gold dust. The hair was plaited with bands sewn with precious metals and stones.

Franks loved and treasured their hair so much that they swear on it or offer it as a symbol of trust, politeness, and appreciation.

On the other side, touching someone’s hair with a razor was an insult and cutting it was a punishment.

For a glimpse into fashion in history READ THIS:

The Complete History of Costume and Fashion from Ancient Egypt to Present Days

By Bronwyn Cosgrave

Table of Content:

Introduction

The Ancient Egypt: The first fashion style

Crete: Minoan splendor

Ancient Greece: Classical Elegance

Ancient Rome: Roman Extravagance

The Byzantine Period: Lavish Imperialism

The Middle Ages: Medieval Europe

The Renaissance: Early Renaissance Style

Baroque Period: The Age of French Dominance

Eighteenth Century: The Rococo

Nineteenth Century: The Birth of the Dandy

Twentieth Century: The Age of Diversity

Index

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

256 p

First published in Great Britain in 2000, by Hamlyn, a division of Octopus Publishing Group Limited

My Notes:

• There are beautiful pictures of historical sources, sometimes 2 per page, and sometimes one picture covers the whole page.
• There are not too many details about costumes or ornaments, just basic information and description, enough for a nonprofessional reader.
• As a plus, the book offers a short overview of the historical period covered in every chapter, as well as an overview of the status of women. 
• It is very fun to stroll through fashion from ancient Egyptians, with their simple wrap-up loin clothes, through the Middle Ages with its awkward poulains (the long pointy shoes), through the baroque with the sophisticated wigs, and finally, arriving at our days with the emancipation of the woman body, almost a 360-degree turn, to the simplicity of the first fashion styles.

Preserving food for later use or transportation

Sea salt harvest - France
Rolf Süssbrich -own work

Salting was one of the most used methods of preserving food in the past, before freezers and fridges. Salt was a very popular item and everybody needed it in quite large quantities.

Sea salt was obtained by flooding specially constructed fields near a sea. The water evaporated, and salt (with grit and other impurities) was at the bottom. This salt was cheap to obtain and cheap to sell and could be produced at large scales.

More pure salt was obtained from natural springs that run through salt deposits in the ground. A series of pipes was set to capture the water of such springs. Then, the water was boiled in huge kettles until evaporation, leaving a better salt behind. The third way to get salt was by digging it in salt mines.

Salt was used to preserve meats and fish, cheese, and butter.

Fruits were dehydrated on large wooden surfaces, often placed outside, under direct sun, and indoors, in a room with opened windows to allow air to circulate. They dried grapes, apricots, apples, dates, figs, pears, peaches, and many other fruits. Some fruits were coated with sugar and dried again.  Some vegetables, like beans, peas, and lentils, were harvested already dried; others, especially the root vegetables, and potatoes, were stored in a cool, dry place and sometimes buried in sand in a sheltered place. They also dried all the herbs used in cooking (or healing practices).

They also used brine (a mixture of salt and water) to preserve the texture of meat. The meat or fish was sunken in brine and left until consumption. The same mixture was used to preserve the cheese. Many vegetables were also pickled in the same way.

A brine mixture with wine, vinegar, spices, and seeds was most often used for pickling.
The wine was also combined with sugar and turned into syrup for preserving fruits.

The oil preservation method was widely used for packing olives. Animal fat was used to preserve cooked meats. Fried or roasted meat was immersed in liquid animal fat and preserved until ready for a meal. Sometimes, instead of fat, they used gelatin obtained by boiling hooves and feet from animals.  

People mainly preserved food for later consumption. Winter was especially hard since no vegetable could grow. The fruits and vegetable were picked and dried at the end of the season. The roots were collected at maturity and sored in dark, cool and dry places. Meats were preserved mainly at the end of fall, when most cattle were slaughter. Pigs were sacrificed even later when the people exhausted the fodder.

People also preserved food to prevent it from spoiling during transportation. As roads developed, more and more goods were traded between different parts of a country or between continents. Spices and exotic fruits came to Europe, and later, coffee and tea were introduced.

Country side diet in the Middle Ages (aprox. 1000 to 1300)

Medieval farmers, paying the "Urbar."

In the Middle Ages, royalty,  nobility, churches, and monasteries owned most of the European land. Very few other individuals owned a little piece of land, like chevaliers or craftsmen.  The rest of the people were considered lucky to have a little cottage to sleep overnight. They were serfs who belonged to a noble and were allowed to work the noble’s land. They would receive food in exchange for their work, which extended all day. That was their paycheck. The food they got was only enough to survive.

Today, it is very difficult to reconstruct the life of a peasant in the Middle Ages. If there are plenty of records for the upper classes, historians have to dig deep for information about the serfs. The documents that they can find are tax records, donations, wills, household inventories, or funeral banquets. One of these documents shows us that in 1268, in the domain of Beaumont-le-Roger, in France, a couple would receive one large and two smaller breads, 2.5 a gallon of wine, 250 gr. of meat or eggs, and a bushel of peas. And this pay was considered high.

These serfs were populating the rural areas, and they accounted for the majority of a country's (or kingdom's) population. Around the house, they were given a small piece of land, like a regular backyard today, where they were allowed to do whatever they wished.  Almost all families were growing some kind of animals and birds and cultivating a small garden.  They usually had pigs, goats, sheep, and a few chickens or geese. For everything they grew or raised, they had to pay taxes to the landlord in the form of produce they got: eggs from birds, meat, wool, and milk from animals.

Their diet was very dull compared to modern eating habits. The base of a daily meal was the bread. Often made by secondary cereals like barley, rye, spelt, or a mixture of grain. Today, we would consider this type of bread healthy compared with the withe bread, but long ago, it wasn’t as easy to process cereals (and deplete them of all the good nutrients). The bread of peasants was very dark in color. The lighter the color of bread, the higher the social status.

The other product in their daily diet was wine. Grapes are easy to grow in good soil, and the wine-making process is an old discovery. In the Middle Ages, having a winery was so common that everybody knew how to make wine. Remember, peasants got wine in exchange for their labor. If they owned a small piece of land, they would cultivate some grapes, too. This habit has survived to this day in Europe, and we can still find many family farms that cultivate grapes to make wine. So, wine was popular and was consumed by everybody in the family, like beer.

Meat was another important part of the Middle Ages diet. People got the meat either as pay for work or from their own small backyard. Sometimes, they hunted small game, but hunting big game was mostly a privilege of the nobles. The meat was consumed mostly fresh and sometimes was salted and smoked to be preserved over the winter. Again, the ratio of meat was very small, and most days, it was not even part of the meal. Along with meat, as a product of the sustainable small economy, cheese, milk, and eggs were used.

Vegetables were largely consumed. The little backyard of a cottage that belonged to a peasant had a garden where women, children, and elderly folks who lived in the house would cultivate legumes, greens, and vegetables such as cabbage, onion, garlic, turnips, a variety of beans and peas, leeks, spinach, squash, etc. From the wild, they would complement with mushrooms, asparagus, watercress, and a few aromatic herbs like basil, fennel, marjoram, or thyme.   

These folks in the Middle Ages were completely dependent on the weather for their survival. If the year was bad (too dry or too wet) and the cereal crop was compromised, then they could face famine. Between 1000 and 1300, four major food crises affected Europe (1005-6, 1032-33, 1195-97, 1224-26). However, the human species survived to this day and writes stories like this one on the Internet!

The art of eating together - conviviality



wikimedia commons
 Giulio Romano, Amore e Psiche,  Palazzo Te a Mantova.

Conviviality is seen as a distinguishing feature between animals and humans. Since prehistoric times, people have gathered to find food, cook food, and eat together. Not only is this conviviality a sign of civilization, but it is also a sign of social status. The richer the meal, the higher the class.

People have organized parties since the Neolithic revolution, when societies started to settle and aggregate around fertile lands, forming communities and building cities. These parties, called banquets, were very often a privilege of the ruling classes. Until the second half of the 20th century, food was consumed for survival worldwide. And it is still a problem these days in some parts of the world. So, only the rich could afford to throw a party.  Some foods were considered a sign of luxury and abundance.

For centuries, the banquets of the rich served multiple purposes: to show off, to make friends, to indebt someone, or to pay respect. And not everybody invited to the party had the same treatment as today. There was discrimination, as we would put it in modern times. The guests were separated by social status: there were sovereigns and vassals and servants and employees. There were even gods invited to come, and they were set at separate tables (later, when the party was over and the guests were gone, the host would eat the meat reserved for those gods).

The hierarchy and power position among the participants at a banquets was shown through the place everyone sat at the table. The higher the position in society, the better place at the banquet table and also the better the food.

A very successful or important party was often recorded in writing to be remembered by the posterity. That’s how we know now when it took place, where, who came to the banquets, what kind of food was served and in what quantities (because the bigger the quantity, the richer the host), and what other events took place, if any.

As time passed, conviviality evolved from a simple act of gathering to an art form to be learned and displayed.  

Phoenicians and their foods

Phoenicia. Kordas, based on Alvaro's work.

Maybe we've become a little sophisticated in our cooking lately, but, we still eat the same food as millenniums ago.

Take the Phoenicians, for example. They ate cereals, especially wheat and barley, often imported from Egypt. They made porridges, breads, and flat cakes that grew in popularity, crossed borders, and survived for centuries. They also had vegetable gardens where they would grow peas, lentils, chickpeas, beans, and a variety of fruits.

The most popular fruits were pomegranates and figs.  The pomegranate fruit was considered a fertility fruit due to its abundance of seed. Figs were considered delicacies and exported to other neighbors (Egyptians). Other fruits they cultivated were dates, apples, quinces, almonds, limes, and grapes.

Grapes were also used to make wine, just as today. The wine-making process was well developed, and there is evidence that wine was “running like water” in a city called Ullaza, meaning that they had a great production of wine. (1) Wine was widely used in religious rituals.

Oils were used in cooking, and it is said that their extraction began in the third millennium B.C.E.
Phoenicians also ate meats (sheep, cattle, rabbits, chicken, doves, and game), milk (a highly appreciated product) and honey (used in cakes and imported from Judah and Israel), fish, salt.

The essential diet in Carthage and the Punic Empire, especially its western territories (Sardinia, Sicily, and Spain), was a dish called puls - a porridge made from mixed cereals. It was embellished with cheese, honey, and eggs.

Here is a simple recipe from Cato, a Roman  who fought in the Punic War and wrote a book called De Agri Cultura:
“Add a pound of flour to water and boil it well. Pour it into a clean tab, adding three pounds of fresh cheese, half a pound of honey, and an egg. Stir well and cook in a new pot”.

1. Food, a culinary history Ed. by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montari, 1999, p.57

I always wondered how people lived 100, 1000, and 10,000 years ago. What did they eat? Where did they sleep? What did they think? What made them happy or sad, what made them laugh or cry? Did they love their mates, or were there other emotions involved? How did they discover simple things like using spices and herbs for cooking? Or counting, writing, and painting? How was life without TV, computers, cars, and airplanes? Or without refrigerators and stoves or washers and dryers? How was life before the bulb?

The older generations of our time may remember ancient things like the telegraph or the big bulky radio. Or they may even know how to store food for winter. Some may know how to make their own shoes or sew their own clothes. Others may know plants that soothe wounds or cure a stomach ache. But most of us are totally helpless without the use of modern technology. We are highly addicted to others for everything we own or need, from food and clothing to entertainment and health.  We forgot how to accomplish the basic tasks of survival.

In this blog, I embark on a journey of discovery to answer some of my own questions as well as others. I aim to shed light on the life of ordinary people of the past. Along the way, I may, occasionally, unearth some extraordinary individuals who led seemingly common lives. I may uncover some extraordinary events that have left an indelible mark on the ordinary life.

The historians of L'Ecole Des Annales and their remarkable books have greatly fueled my curiosity about the past. I am deeply grateful for their inspiration.