Wings of History and our calender
The origin of 2015.
And if you wonder why it is just exactly that we call this year 2015 instead of the far more enigmatic 'Year 3 in the 697 Olympic'?
Well, wonder no more. The origin of our own calendar can be found within the Roman empire which of course left after it a great many things. And one of those things was what would end up being the foundation for the calendar that is now used by the majority of the world in our daily tongue and life.
Our current global calendar took it´s first few humble steps towards becoming a thing as early as BC46 when Julius Caesar (a kick ass Roman guy and without a doubt my fav Roman emperor) decided that the out of whack seasons that was plaguing the Roman Empire back then absolutely needed to stop.
music of the day while you are reading our article
Forever Mournful by Netherbird
From Afar, tomorrow was born in Yesterday.
The season where out of whack because up until that point the Roman year was stubbornly made up of only 354 days per year instead of roughly 365, so every year the seasons got a little bit more out of sync with nature (not that it is helping us right now that they changed it, but back then it did). So Good ol Julius decided as the resolute, and sane man that he was to add a bunch of days in one fell swoop, and while he was at it, he came to the conclusion that the Roman empire should start tracking the sun instead of the Moon to bring the current and future seasons back in sync with how mother natures actual seasons behaved.
In total he added 67 days to that year, making it the longest year ever in the known history of mankind at least.
And as such, on Jan 1, BC 45 the bigger part of Europe finally had the seeds to the calendar we still use, and a year with 365 days per year (roughly).
Yes, I know.
Todays Gregorian calendar is not really credited to good old pagan emperors, Romans or not, but the Gregorian calendar is like so many other modern things nothing but a careful iteration of what came before it. And the foundation for what we have today can be found in what JC created back then.
That, and that entire Jesus toddler craze in year zero thingy of course.
No pesky back and forth discussions between opposing stubborn politicians about what needed to be done, because if Julius knew one thing, it was how to take charge and just do what needed to be done.
And had the world only adopted that way of life, then we would undoubtedly not have to see today´s wasteful corporate and state behavior where red tape and spineless puppets create impossible situations where 10 overpaid and incompetent senior officers sit around wasting time and resources for countless of years by making what should be an obviously quick and easy thing into a slow moving and dragged out decision whether or not one employee can go ahead and buy a pencil or not (yes, that sort of insane thing actually do happen in the real world).
Neither would we see any fossil fuel companies being allowed to continue destroying our world long after common sense clearly told us that it has to stop. No, the JC way would have been to dismantle them all in one single day :).
But before the birth of the "julius" calendar which we all enjoy.
There where others too, for instance, the Greek which became a thing all the way back in 776BC.
And the greeks, as the cool and for the time combative people that they where decided that to keep track of pesky appointments we had to have proper physically enduring games ( and boy, do we need that today at all workplaces around our sedentary world ). So they founded the Olympic games, and the first Olympic game became their year zero, or as they actually called it, Year 1. But in today's world we do use the number zero even tho our good old Greek friends did not.
And so, by that old Olympic calendar, 2015 is/would be called, Year 3 in the 697 Olympic. ( And personally, as much as I like the charismatic old Greek way of labelling our year, for pure typing comfort I am quite happy with only having to type 2015 ).
But, no matter what version you prefer.
Or where you live, or what culture you wine and dine on, and what particles you breathe in your air polluted ways.
I wish you a better than ever 2015 to you all.
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