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?

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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?

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The short answer, Romans, the medium answer, Julius Caesar + the Egyptians.

The more complete answer is that the Romans had the concept of months since their founding, following a lunar cycle with days added every time the year got too out of sync with the seasons. In the year 46 BCE, Julius Caesar decided that this system was dumb, and easy to manipulate (because he had been the one doing the manipulation for the last 20 years). So he recruited the help of some Egyptian astronomers to revamp the calendar.

Egypt had a 365 day year, divided into 12, 30 day months, + 5 days at the end. (They actually had several different calendars, but this is complicated enough as it is)

Julius coopted the Egyptian system, with a few modifications. First, he made February 28 days, and put those other days into 31 day months. This is because the Romans had a superstition that February was an unlucky month. Then, he took the +5 extra days, and also put them in as other 31 day months. Last change he made was to automatically add an extra day to February every 4 years to keep the alignment with the seasons.

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