timekeeping and calendars

[mocha]

Ellirnae (something like [e'ʝɨɾ.nə], I suppose), my current conworld, is a mars-sized moon orbiting a superjupiter called Tarka. Another of its peculiarities is that the difference between its rotational inclination, its orbital inclination and its jupiter's orbit around the local star are so small that it, for all intents and purposes, has no seasons. It's day lasts a bit over 40 hours, 20 night 20 day, and the whole tarka-ellirne system takes ~160 local days to complete a year. By a cosmic coincidence, this comes out to almost exactly the amount of time a human pregnancy takes to completion.

Because of the lack of seasons, the people of ellirnae aren't as interested in calendars as humans in worlds with seasons, such as Earth. while many ellirnean societies are agricultural, the relevant information for a farmer is more related to when the next rains will come, which is something calendars don't help with. Nevertheless, measuring time is still a useful thing to be able to do: I haven't come up with actual calendars, but I'm thinking something more along the lines of periods upon periods: "months" and "years" that don't necessarily add up to a proper orbital year, since the orbital year is not very releant, but rather that just make for useful durations in order to talk about, say, how much time I will loan you my cart or whatever.

I think it's interesting to imagine how the conception of time would develop in a society where astronomical cycles are practically meaningless. On Earth, seasonal variations are plainly obvious almost everywhere - if not directly through climate, then indirectly, like in river throughput. But on a world with no axial tilt, orbiting a world that has no eccentricity in its orbit, I can't think of anything astronomical that would cause noticeable cycles. Would cultures base time units off human aging? Perhaps the aging of livestock? Crops? Perhaps they would just have the concept of a "day" and nothing else? So many possibilities.

[WeepingElf]

My Elves, who live on this Earth, have a lunisolar calendar with Meton's cycle; but I haven't elaborated the details yet.

[Raphael]

I once played with the idea of a culture that wouldn't really have a mathematically developed calendar - instead, they would handle astronomical irregularities by counting years and days based on Spring Festivals, and each year, in each community, the Spring Festival would be celebrated 10 days after the Community Elders had decided, based on observing the weather, that it was now officially spring.

[mocha]

I once played with the idea of a culture that wouldn't really have a mathematically developed calendar - instead, they would handle astronomical irregularities by counting years and days based on Spring Festivals, and each year, in each community, the Spring Festival would be celebrated 10 days after the Community Elders had decided, based on observing the weather, that it was now officially spring.

Would these elders be groundhogs perchance?

[Raphael]

Would these elders be groundhogs perchance?

Lol. No, sorry.

[Torco]

I think it's interesting to imagine how the conception of time would develop in a society where astronomical cycles are practically meaningless. On Earth, seasonal variations are plainly obvious almost everywhere - if not directly through climate, then indirectly, like in river throughput. But on a world with no axial tilt, orbiting a world that has no eccentricity in its orbit, I can't think of anything astronomical that would cause noticeable cycles. Would cultures base time units off human aging? Perhaps the aging of livestock? Crops? Perhaps they would just have the concept of a "day" and nothing else? So many possibilities.

Oh, absolutey. I hadn't realized how profoundly important seasons are until I started thinking about conworlds without them. Things which can mark cycles, however, as far as I've considered, are:

The year: like, okay, sure, the year isn't *salient* (not more than the metonic cycles on earth, for example), but it's still noticeable: you can think of it as the amount of time it takes for the sky to be the same at midnight, I think.

Oppositions. earth and venus are in opposition once every 1,6 years or something, and they would be even if neither had any seasons, and that's a thing you could mark as well. Conjunctions are also like that: whenever the moon eclipses mercury or whatever. Ellirnae doesn't have a moon, it *is* a moon, so things are a bit different (it being tidally locked, and its primary being rather big, all planets are eclipsed by the primary everyday, so bummer)

I think that, unlike on earth, different cultures would end up just organizing time differently: kind of what happens in our world with units of time bigger than years: there are no supra-annual cycles to speak of (i think), which fits because different cultures have come up with different supra-annual cycles just for organization's sake: we have decades, centuries etcetera, the mayans had their own lengths, tuns and baktuns etcetera. we have weeks, other peoples counted days by thirteens, maybe some others by nines. the pregnancy is a relevant, human-sized period of time... also the time it takes for a person to go into puberty, and perhaps a human life, but these have the problem that.... like, what if you've lived "a life" and are still alive? wouldn't that be kind of depressing? what if you're 1.1 puberties old and haven't started eyaculating? it could get confusing... so I think people will just come up with random numbers and stick to them. the 9 day week upon the 12 week 'month' that ends up being *around* what a crop takes to mature or something. I think you would need *some* kind of named lengths of time above a day, though, if nothing else, to tell people "don't worry, i'll be back in a [whatever]" instead of "don't worry, i'll be back in eight dozen and ten days".

[Moose-tache]

The Javanese calendar layers cycles of days to create a 35 day cycle, without any direct reference to celestial movement.

Also, there's nothing wrong with just counting days without any months or years. Maybe it's day #53562, and people refer to last week as "the fifties" or last year as "the fifth centuriy." The whole thing can start over at one when the number gets too cumbersome.

[Torco]

Oooh, neat! and indonesia is pretty close to the equator, its climate seems to be less seasonal than in other places at least with regards to temperatures, with rains that are not *that* seasonal either, so it fits.