A Short History of Time

by Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Why do we measure time in the way that we do? Why is a week seven days long? At what point did minutes and seconds come into being? Why are some calendars lunar and some solar?
The organization of time into hours, days, months, and years seems immutable and universal, but is actually far more artificial than most people realize. For example, the French Revolution resulted in a restructuring of the French calendar, and the Soviet Union experimented with five and then six-day weeks.
Leofranc Holford-Strevens brings us this fascinating study of time using a range of examples from Ancient Rome and Julius Caesar's imposition of the Leap Year to the 1920's project for a fixed Easter. Those interested in time, history, and the development of the calendar will enjoy this absorbing exploration of an aspect of our lives that we all take for granted.
(Oxford University Press description)

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science

137 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Leofranc Holford-Strevens (born 1946) is an English classical scholar and polymath, an authority on the works of Aulus Gellius, and a former reader for the Oxford University Press.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is correct, it is a short book – 122 pages plus a few pages of appendices. Having said that, this is not a book about space/time, the cosmos or scientific views of what time is or isn’t, it is the history of how humans have measured time (and do measure it now) throughout history – so it concerns questions like ‘What is a day? a week? A month?’ You’d think it was obvious but when you begin to break it down it really isn’t, and, man, you wouldn’t believe how flippin’ complicated it is!

Here is the opening paragraph:

‘The most fundamental unit of time-measurement is in most societies the period of the earth’s rotation on its axis, which is normally known as the day. Unfortunately this word and its equivalents in other languages are ambiguous: other meanings apart, they may denote either the light period (daytime) as opposed to the night, or the combination of daytime and night. In some cultures, this combination is termed the night, as it used to be by Celts and Germanic peoples, who measured the length of journeys or campaigns by the periods of inaction during darkness; this practice – to which we still revert when booking a hotel – survives in the English word “fortnight”, meaning 14 nights (formerly too in “sennight”, meaning a week). Nevertheless, the prevailing word is “day”.’

There is also the question of when the day begins. In Western culture it begins at midnight but in other cultures it starts at sunset, sunrise, and even at midday (nautical – historic).

The book could be considered dry and boring to people who don’t know what to expect, and I thought so at times while reading it. The book goes into minute detail about the way different cultures and religions have measured time, argued over what is ‘right’ and how we arrived at the system most of us (not all) use today. There are solar calendars, lunar calendars, the Julian and Gregorian calendars, Jewish calendars; there were calendars in Alexandria, Greece (where each city state had its own), Iran, Central America, China, India, Ireland and pretty much everywhere in between. Once you get religions involved it becomes both ridiculously complex and heatedly argued over. There is a whole chapter devoted to how they work out when Easter should be, and this was argued about for centuries and, to an extent, still is.

It’s not just about the religion, it’s about when the year should start. We take it for granted that the year begins on 1 January each year, but why should it? In the past, some cultures’ year began in September, October or March, so when historians study events of the Greeks, the Romans or other ancient civilisations, they have to be careful about the dates because most of them probably can’t really be nailed down.

The earth and the seasons (bless their little cotton socks) – sources of most ancient cultures’ methods of measuring time are not very helpful to humans trying to make sense of it all. If the earth rotated around the sun in, say, exactly 360 days, we could have 12 months of 30 days each, so there would be no need for leap years or poor February only having 29 days three years out of four. And if the seasons began and ended at the beginning of a month (or if we changed the dates of the months to coincide with the seasons exactly), that would be easier, too. Various historical calendars have tried to simplify all the computations but they end up with the months being out of sync with the seasons so it doesn’t work.

An example of how detailed (and arbitrary) this gets is:

‘In 63 BC Caesar at that point an ambitious young politician and not a military conqueror, was elected pontifex maximus, thus becoming responsible for intercalation [the addition of an additional day, week or month to a year]; during the Gallic War it took place only in those years in which he could spend February away from Gaul, in 55 and 52 BC, and not at all in the ensuing civil war. As a result, the calendar once more ran ahead of the sun, until Caesar, having defeated his implacable enemies [but not Asterix and Obelix] was free in 46 BC to take decisive action. Ordering not only a normal intercalation, but the insertion between November and December of two long months, together comprising 67 days, he extended that year – the last year of the confusion [wanna bet?], as a late Roman writer calls it – to 445 days [!!] in order to make up for the missed intercalations of wartime.’
[The bits in square brackets are mine and not in the quotation, you will not be amazed to learn.]

To the ordinary reader like me, you just have to gloss over large parts of the complicated stuff because it would take some serious study to be able to understand it properly and, quite frankly, I don’t care that much about the subject to bother. Here’s a taster – and I won’t bother trying to explain what all the words mean:

‘In Bede’s time, the lune of the day was found by adding to the epact … parameters known as “lunar regulars” [I don’t think Luna is a bar] to obtain the moon’s age on the 1st of each month: thus for epact 11, the lune of 1 March was 11 + 9 = 20, of 1 April 11 + 10 = 21. From the 12th century, however, it was found directly from the so-called Golden Number [NOT the same as Charlie’s Golden Ticket – don’t get excited], written in calendars against the dates of the new moons in the corresponding year of the 19-year cycle [even pachyderms don't have a cycle that long]; similarly Bede’s method of finding feriae from the concurrent with the aid of “solar regulars” (for example, if the concurrent was 2, then the feria of 1 March was 2 + 5 = 7, of 1 April 2 + 1 = 3) was replaced in the later Middle Ages by the Sunday Letter [not sure if that's a Sunday French letter] (see Chapter 5).’

See what I mean? You can understand this if you give it some thought because the terminology is explained in a very useful glossary and it does make sense, it’s just all so factual and complex that it becomes difficult to take it all in. I think if you really want to get into the weeds of it, you’d need to read it several times.

Okay so I have been a bit flippant and mildly insulting to this book BUT I have to say, I am glad I read it because there are a few nuggets in there that are fascinating, and it also makes one realise that all these historical dates are fudged, made up or guessed at when you go back further than about 500 AD (or CE if you prefer). The author did an enormous amount of research and has covered cultures throughout the world and throughout history, and for that he should be commended. I feel sure that for religious scholars of many faiths, as well as academics, scientists and social historians, this is a valuable and unique reference work. For that reason, I give it four stars, which is three for enjoyment and five for content. Oh, and it’s small enough to fit in the pocket of my tweed jacket.

[Relstuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

A history of how we measure time and the different systems that mankind has created to tell us where we are in time. Dense and a bit dry but short.

[Eliot Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a history of timekeeping, it's a pretty solid book. It goes over all of the different facets involved with time keeping, such as solar/lunar calendars, days, months, years, etc. which I found pretty enlightening given how accustomed we are to perceiving the current system as the only method. It includes lots of interesting figures and pictures, and contains enough information if you were to need a quick reference about any particular society's timekeeping for a paper.

My only complaint is that at some points, the author tends to drop very dense paragraphs of info, little of which interests me as a minor calendar nerd. For example:

"The 7th-century Chronicon Paschale (so called because it began with an account of Easter reckoning) opted for 25 March 5509 BC. Later Byzantines, however, preferred to defer the Creation till the beginning of the civil year on I September; an unsuccessful alternative was 25 March 5508. In Russia the year of Creation was the regular dating system, reckoned originally from 1 March 5508 (less often 5509) BC but by the later 14th century from I September 5509 BC, till by decree of Peter the Great 31 December AM 7208 was followed by 1 January 1700 Old Style."

I can usually appreciate dense information when it teaches me something interesting, but sometimes a page would go on listing trivial historical variations that added little to my understanding—luckily, the book is very short to make up for that. On the other hand, the information is impressively thorough and does a great job at giving a complete picture. Plus, you could argue having to skim over excess information is better than not having enough in the first place—hence why I only took off 1 star :)

[Gjergj Arianiti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book 99.999% of people will not enjoy, however for what it intends to be, it is a good book. The book gives a general overview of nearly all timekeeping across cultures and religions, and the different motivating factors behind their creation. If you are interested, for example, in a very detailed history of how the calendar developed in the west (among many other things), this may be the book for you. Otherwise, like the vast majority of people, you will find this boring, but that nonetheless diminishes its quality as a book on the history of timekeeping.

[Cory · Rating 3 out of 5]

So as a history of Time, it’s probably 5 stars. As readable/enjoyable it’s 2 stars. So I’ll call it 3 stars. It’s definitely interesting and a wonder we ever agreed on a single calendar (for the most part).

I had a bit more to say on a status update, but I can’t copy on my phone.

[Jim Buzbee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes you think, but it's likely more than you ever wanted to know about how we denote time and dates.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fascinating little volume has to do with the day, the week, the month, and the year, and the perennial problem of measuring and labeling them properly. THE central problem is that the year is not evenly divisible into a whole number of days, and certainly not divisible into a whole number of months. Various cultures and nations have dealt with this in a wide variety of ways by adding leap days, leap weeks, and even leap months, in a dizzying variety of weirdly repeating cycles. For example, an early Iranian calendar had 12 30-day months with 5 additional days and various additional days as necessary. The maddening irregularity of the day/year cycle and the surprising diversity of the solutions which have been tried are very interesting.

There is a whole chapter just on the calculations for Easter, which drove Christians crazy for centuries, and was the basis for the black art of computus, devoted entirely to trying to balance the astronomical and calendrical requirements of the spring festival. I had read before that early church fathers had sent out letters each year to let their churches know when Easter would be that year - now I understand the depth of that undertaking.

Also interesting is the astrological basis for our weekday names, and the story of the battle between the 8-day Roman market cycle with what became the 7-day week, and the reforms that in the 20th century almost created several days in our year that would be "outside" the days of the week.

There is too much jargon at times to fully follow the narrative of the systems and their reforms.

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book takes an interesting subject and makes it dull. Due to its short length it reads like one fact after another and jumps around different cultures and countries every few paragraphs. For me this made it difficult to absorb, a problem compounded by the use of the esoteric jargon found on nearly every page. Ok as a kind of reference though. I would prefer a book that spends more time setting an historical perspective and having some kind of connecting narrative. This kind of book would of course be many times longer but would I think be a much more entertaining and satisfying read.

[Rosy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This little book is lovely to hold and to look at (a Folio freebie), but sadly, it's a bit of a yawner.

It offers a lot of potentially interesting information on many methods of counting time, but I think it's too compact and the information is all you get -- not to mention the undeniably dry style.

I was so looking forward to early people observing the movement of the sun and the changing length of days; to courtiers competing in the style and accuracy of timepieces; to astronomers at their telescopes. This is not that book.

[Ljubomir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not to be confused with "A Brief History of Time", this book is actually a history of the different calendars and timekeeping methods humanity has used throughout its history.

That's not a con for me, but keep in mind, that it's technical and to-the-point.

[Maria Freeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very hard for me to follow due to lack of definitions and assumptions about the reader's christian background/knowledge.