eli5 What is the concept of months? Why Feb has only 28 while some have 31? When did the concept of 365 days’ year come in people?
In: Other
A month is about how long it takes to go from full moon to full moon which is a little less than 30 days (29.53 days). The moon used to be what timed the calendar, but it doesn’t sync up with the Earth’s orbit around the sun (365.2422 days) which is what controls the seasons. You can see this in things that still use the older lunar calendar. The Muslim’s Ramadan slowly moves through the calendar as years go by. Easter does a similar thing except it’s fixed around the spring equinox and can’t go that far. It can still be anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th.
Our uneven months are a way to get the lunar calendar to fit into a solar one. Which months got assigned days is arbitrary. The calendar would work just as well if we alternated 31 and 30 day months with one of the short ones only being 30 days in leap years. The Romans who constructed most of our current solar calendar thought February was an unlucky month, so they made the unlucky month shorter.
Latest Answers