Re: Calendar systems?

On Saturday, November 6, 2004, at 02:24 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 02:42:13PM +0100, Carsten Becker wrote:
[snip]
>> Is our calendar a lunisolar calendar since we have
>> months that approximately fit the moon's cycle and the year
>> that approximately fits how long the earth needs to get
>> around the sun one time?
>
> Nope; our calendar is purely solar.
Indeed it is. I was going to answer Carsten' mail, but Mark has beaten me
to it and probably done a better job   :)

I'll just add:
[snip]
> Lunisolar calendars (e.g. the Jewish and Chinese) have common years of
> 12 lunar months (about 354 days); every 2 or 3 years there is a leap
> year of 13 lunar months (about 384 days), so on average the year stays
> in synch with the tropical year.
Precisely so. The ancient Greek calendar was also exactly like that - or
perhaps I should have said 'calendars', as the Greek were fiercely and
each city state, it seems, had its own month names, and its own system for
intercalating the 13th month and of course had to have a different New
year from its neighbor   :)

Ray
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