Resumo de Calender - a.k. hussain

The Chinese calendar begins in 2637 B.C., the year in which the legendary Emperor Huangdi supposedly invented it. This calendar designates years in cycles of 60. For example, 2000 is the 17th year in the 78th cycle. The years in each cycle are designated by a word combination formed from two series of terms, one of which involves the name of any 12 animals. These animals, in the order they appear in the cycle, are the rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. The appropriate animal name is assigned to each year. The year 2000 in the Chinese calendar is the year of the dragon.

The Chinese year is based on the moon and generally consists of 12 months. Each month begins at new moon and has 29 or 30 days. An extra month is added to a year seven times during a 19-year period so that the calendar and the seasons stay roughly in step. The year starts at the second new moon after the beginning of winter.

History

Ancient calendars usually represented some sort of compromise between the lunar and solar years, with some years of 12 months and some of 13.

The Babylonians, who lived in the southern part of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, developed a calendar that represented many primitive procedures. They intercalated, or added, an extra month to their years at irregular intervals. When the royal astrologers discovered that the calendar had run badly out of step, they decreed an intercalary month. A calendar composed of alternate 29-day and 30-day months keeps roughly in step with the 354-day lunar year. To coordinate this calendar with the solar year, the Babylonians intercalated an extra month three times in a cycle of eight years. But even this did not compensate with sufficient accuracy for the accumulated differences, and the Babylonian calendar was quite confused.

The Egyptians were probably the first to adopt a mainly solar calendar. They noted that the Dog Star, Sirius, reappeared in the eastern sky just before sunrise after several months of invisibility. They also discovered that the annual flood of the Nile River came soon after Sirius reappeared. They used this event to fix their calendar, and came to recognize a year of 365 days, made up of 12 months each 30 days long, and an extra five days added at the end. But they did not allow for the extra fourth of a day, and their calendar drifted into error. According to the famed Egyptologist J. H. Breasted, the earliest date known in the Egyptian calendar corresponds to 4236 B.C. in terms of our present system.Write your abstract here.

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