Good afternoon, everyone ! I would like to know why is the Ethiopian calendar 7 to 8 years behind the American (or otherwise known as the gregorian) calendar.
In: 8
Calendars are very subjective. Everyone generally agrees how long a day lasts (at least on average), but everything else is up for grabs. Weeks, months, and years all vary in length depending on the culture. Because of the political and economic power that Europe and the USA have had for several hundred years, most countries use the European/Christian calendar, either exclusively or in addition to a local traditional calendar.
Choosing a year as the “start” of your calendar is also completely subjective. The Gregorian calendar uses a guess of the date when Jesus was supposedly born as the year 1 AD and counts from there. Some Christian groups such as those in Ethiopia also use Jesus’s birth, but they have a different guess as to the date that occurred. In non-Christian cultures, the calendars are obviously not based on Jesus’s life but on some other important historical event. The Hebrew calendar is based on the creation of the universe, according to ancient Torah scholars. China has traditionally based year counts on when various emprorers assumed the throne. In North Korea, the official (but little used) calendar is based on the birth of Kim Il Sung, the founder of the current regime.
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