How old is lunar calendar

Hunting the largest animals was arduous, and might require hunters to follow herds of horses, bison, mammoth or ibex for many weeks. Other big animals such as the auroch, cave bear and cave lion were well known but rarely hunted for food because they had special status in the mythic realm. The Auroch is very important to the search for earliest constellations. The phases of the moon depicted in these sets of marks are inexact. Precision was impossible unless all nights were perfectly clear which is an unrealistic expectation.

The arithmetic counting skill implied by these small lunar calendars is obvious. The recognition that there are phases of the moon and seasons of the year that can be counted — that should be counted because they are important — is profound.

The reality of time factoring is objective physics and does not depend upon human awareness or consciousness. What Marshack uncovered is the intuitive discovery of mathematical sets and the application of those sets to the construction of a calendar. As a result, the Chinese lunar calendar corresponds both to the phases of the moon and to the periodic motion of the earth around the sun.

In the Chinese lunar calendar, the first month is traditionally called Zheng Yue the first month, not January while the 11th month and the 12th month are called Dong Yue eleventh month and La Yue end-of-year month respectively; however, Dong Yue is rarely used at present.

The Chinese idiom of Han Dong La Yue literally chilly winter used to indicate the cold climate indicate that the 10th, 11th and the 12th months in the Chinese lunar calendar are the coldest of a year. The 11th to the 29th or 30th day are directly called with the number of the date. For example, the 22nd day of the 1st month is called Zheng Yue Nian Er, i.

The 24 solar terms, an integral part of the Chinese lunar calendar, reflect the annual apparent motion of the sun. As the 24 seasonal points of the stem-branch calendar, the 24 solar terms are distributed in 12 months, and each month contains two solar terms. The 24 solar terms adopts the cycle of the earth's revolution around the sun, which basically summarizes the different positions of the sun on the ecliptic at different times of the year, the exact time of four seasons, the occurrence rules of natural phenomena like rainfall and snowfall, and the time of some phenological phenomena in nature.

The 24 solar terms are determined according to the positions of the earth in the ecliptic i. The 24 solar terms were established in ancient times and incorporated into the Taichu calendar in the Western Han Dynasty BC - 24 AD as a supplementary calendar to guide farming.

Through the 24 solar terms, the Chinese lunar calendar accurately reflects the changes at all seasons to facilitate people's production, living and agricultural cultivation. Most lunar calendars are in fact lunisolar calendars. That is, months reflect the lunar cycle, but then intercalary months are added to bring the calendar year into synchronisation with the solar year.

Some examples are the Chinese and Hindu calendars, and most calendar systems used in antiquity. All these calendars have a variable number of months in a year. The reason for this is that a year is not evenly divisible by an exact number of lunations, so without the addition of intercalary months the seasons would drift each year. This results in a thirteen-month year every two or three years.

Even though the Gregorian calendar is in common and legal use, lunar calendars serve to determine traditional holidays in parts of the world such as China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The lunar eclipse calendar is a listing of all lunar eclipses from through A lunar eclipse lasts for a few hours and can be viewed from anyone on the night side of the Earth. Every year there are at least two lunar eclipses, although total lunar eclipses are significantly less common.

If one knows the date and time of an eclipse, it is possible to predict the occurrence of other eclipses using an eclipse cycle like the saros.