9781422276600

p  The ancient Sumerians developed the first widely used lunar calendar, based on the phases of the Moon, 4,000 years ago.

to express units of time in a way that could be understood by the other. Indeed, much of the early contact between Europeans and Native Americans was motivated by an interest in trade. Similarly, until interstate commerce began in the early republic, localities often kept their own time. In such situations misunderstandings about time could be more than just irritating. They could lead to mistrust, which would be damaging to future relationships between two cultures. In the 21st century b.c.e. the Sumerians (people of the Sumer culture in southernMesopotamia— the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers in Asia) were probably responsible for the first widespread use of a lunar calendar, or calendar based on theMoon.TheMoon had an easily recognizable cycle of 29 to 30 days, so the Sumerians were one of several peoples that began to divide time by lunar months. Once people began to give names to the cycles of the Moon, the concept of months was born. Most early calendars were in fact just a collection of months. In the 18th century b.c.e., the Babylonian Empire (also located in southern Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq) chose to standardize the year and adopted a lunar calendar with the year

Origins of a Calendar Year n

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