Re: CHAT: The Elven (or Techian) calendar

> Van: Jake X
> Onderwerp: Re: CHAT: The Elven (or Techian) calendar
> >
> I heard something about how much more sense it would make if we just had
35
> ten day weeks a year and five days of some kind of new year celebration.
The
> problem with any calendar system is that it tries to make a correlation
> between three distint phenomena: Earth's rotation (day),  the cyces of the
> moon (month), and Earth's orbit around the sun (year). The three things,
> originating from multiple time systems, just aren't scientifically
related.
> I think that anyone making a conculture should just trash that whole
system
> and start afresh. If it takes place on an 'alien' world, perhaps make a
more
> even system that divides better. For example, 360 days/year and 36 days/
> month, with ten months.
> Our calendar is not a convention anyone needs to put very much weight in.
Well, how about my conworld, Almaran, which has four moons? I use a solar
year of 365.283 days. The Romal calendar (which is used in many of the more
civilized countries, especially those following the United Pantheonic
Religion) is divided into 365 days, equating 13 months of exactly 28 days
each. Every seven years, there are three leap days (the septannual leap
days), which fall outside of the normal months, and which commemorate the
Grand Cataclysm (yes, I have one too) that struck the world 518 years ago.

The moons have orbital periods of 12.8, 15.1, 28.0 and 63.8 days, so the
third moon best approximates a month. Weeks are somewhat irregular: some
cultures use weeks of seven days, some use weeks of four days.

Off course, other cultures on Almaran use different calendars, but this one
is by fat the most common.

Maarten

P.S.
Hmm, seems like this should go on conculture-l rather than here... Oh well,
once we get into astronomy or celestial physics, I guess I can't control
myself very well ;-)