8 ms·

Interesting that the dates are "Month 3 of Summer, Day 24" etc. The curious bit to me being the enduring use of 4 distinct seasons, when there are obviously ot

Interesting that the dates are "Month 3 of Summer, Day 24" etc. The curious bit to me being the enduring use of 4 distinct seasons, when there are obviously other ways to mark a year. Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
piethesailorman 5y ago
I recently read about the Hindu seasons. Here is an off the cusp search result on the subject. https://www.learnreligions.com/the-six-seasons-of-india-p2-1770072 https://www.learnreligions.com/the-six-seasons-of-india-p2-1...
Karawebnetwork 5y ago
"Sekki is the traditional way of expressing seasons in Japan. There are 24 sekki, including rikka (立夏, the first day of summer) in early May, shoman (小満, lit. “a little full” as in growing, waxing) in late May and boshu (芒種, lit. bearded grain) in early June. The 24 sekki can be further divided into three for a total of 72 shijijūni ko (七十二侯) that last for about five days each. These subseasons include mugi no toki itaru (麦秋至), or “the time for wheat has come,” which lasts from May 31 to June 5, and kamakiri shozu (“the mantis is born”) from June 6 to June 10. " https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/just-how-many-seasons-does-japan-really-have https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/just-how-... The full list is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar#The_24_sekki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar#The_24_sekki There used to be a maintained shared Google Calendar you could use that would display those in your agenda. While the names did not fit exactly with my local weather, it was interesting to give a name to small parts of the year. It felt very natural and intuitive.
- yowlingcat 5y ago
  I love this. Ever since moving back into the wild from the city, it's been so nice to take notice of all the little "microseasons" you'll see inside a usual season. I took it for granted as a kid, but as an adult, it's nice to name and partake in the various parts of the year as you mention.
DiggyJohnson 5y ago
From my perspective, anything regularly periodic in nature is used to track time: the Sun (years, seasons, days, day/dusk) and Moon (months, weeks, King tides). Consider even the starfield (astrology: years, decades+). Four seasons makes sense in all of these contexts, and I hypothesize that there are a lot of patterns in nature that are well bucketed into 4 sequential, equal seasons. This is impossible for me to demonstrate, unfortunately. Also, division by by 4 and 12, a year into four seasons is like a month into four weeks. Weeks seem to me to be among our most subjective fundamental time unit. I see weeks as being the most arbitrary. I always like to imagine what life would be like if weeks were 3 days long. Or 11. I just love this topic.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > I always like to imagine what life would be like if weeks were 3 days long. Or 11. I just love this topic. I especially like that you chose prime numbers. A week composed of a prime number of days will remain the smallest indivisible group of days that a culture will have.
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    Agreed, glad you called this out! I was thinking about rambling about this, but this is a topic I can go on and on about, and I was already off to a slow start today...
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      Please ramble! I've actually though much about this as well. It kind of forces a "holy day" because without one nothing fits into one week with any period other than "every day" or "every week" - be that week 5 or 7 or 11 days. I've heard that the seven day week was independently developed at least three times in ancient times across disparate cultures as well.
  - joebob42 5y ago
    Well, maybe, except that months are sometimes prime numbers and we subdivide them anyways, right? I guess weeks don't exactly subdivide months, they're sort of separate systems?
Someone 5y ago
> Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons? Ancient Egyptian :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar: “The ancient Egyptian calendar – a civil calendar – was a solar calendar with a 365-day year. The year consisted of three seasons of 120 days each, plus an intercalary month of five epagomenal days treated as outside of the year proper. Each season was divided into four months of 30 days.”
- aaronharnly 5y ago
  So, a better calendar than ours :(
  - shagie 5y ago
    The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.) - https://youtu.be/fD-R35DSSZY https://youtu.be/fD-R35DSSZY gets into the "why the year we have is designed the way it is" ... though it takes 22 minutes to get to that part. It wasn't really better as the 30 * 12 + 5 approach needed manual application of the + 5... which is what the new calendar was trying to avoid.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      I gather +536 felt longer.
- drocer88 5y ago
  "There are just two seasons in the old Icelandic calendar: [...] summer and winter." https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/10/21/do_you_know_your_old_icelandic_months/ https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/10/21/do_you_kn...
  - jointpdf 5y ago
    The local version of this is: there are only two seasons in Michigan—winter and construction.
AlotOfReading 5y ago
India (and nearby areas) famously used/uses 6 seasons. The Mayan Haab' isn't precisely a seasonal calendar, but each of the 20 'months' was used to much the same effect.
ASalazarMX 5y ago
It's common among many ancient cultures to treat equinoxes and solstices as events of great importance, as those mark the beginning of the season change, but not all regions experience seasons the same. Ancient Egyptians, while knowledgeable of astronomy, had only three seasons: Akhet (summer/heat), Peret (flooding, of the Nile) and Shemu (harvest). Notice the conspicuous absence of winter. https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/01/28/a-year-in-three-seasons-ancient-egypts-calendar/ https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/01/28/a-year-in-three-seaso...
- irrational 5y ago
  Oh, when it snows in Egypt (which it does do on occasion) they definitely notice the conspicuous absence of winter.
- walrus01 5y ago
  In particular the traditional Persian new year (Nowruz) starts in spring, and is celebrated throughout central asia as far as Kazakhstan.
  - layer8 5y ago
    The roman calendar started the year in spring as well with March (hence the names September/October/November/December are literally the 7th/8th/9th/10th month). The Greek apparently were all over the place with the year starting in summer/fall/winter depending on region/polis.
    - devman0 5y ago
      I'd heard this was because July and August (for Julius and Augustus) were added later to the calendar and originally there were only 10 months that started with January.
      - layer8 5y ago
        I believe those were merely renamed, and the original year was 10 months from March to December, with a nondescript “winter” period between December and March.
divbzero 5y ago
Another phenomenon I’ve found curious is the cross-cultural definition of a week as roughly a quarter moon, and correlated names for days of the week. [1] Sunday Sun Sōlis Hēlíou 日曜日 Monday Moon Lūnae Selḗnēs 月曜日 Tuesday Mars Mārtis Áreōs 火曜日 Wednesday Mercury Mercuriī Hermoû 水曜日 Thursday Jupiter Iovis Diós 木曜日 Friday Venus Veneris Aphrodítēs 金曜日 Saturday Saturn Sāturnī Krónou 土曜日 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week
- thechao 5y ago
  There's some ... but I think it misses two really important ones (and this is just off the top of my head): 1. The Romans had an eight day "week"; and, 2. The mesoamericans had a 260 day "week" (or, at best, interlocking 13 and 20 day "weeks"). I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >The Romans had an eight day "week"; and, The Beatles were Romans!
    - mbg721 5y ago
      So were the B-52's, but only if you wanted to.
  - robinsoh 5y ago
    > I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world. The 7-day week originated in Sumerian Babylon culture from 2100 BC and has to do with quartering moon phases. I worry when seeing many things attributed to "Judeo-Christian culture" which actually originated from other cultures, many aspects of what's in "Judeo-Christian culture" including perhaps some of the key stories in the Old Testament like the Flood appear to have been copied or at least inspired by stories from Sumerian culture which was considered the 'high culture' of the region.
tigerlily 5y ago
I once heard Canadians in Winnipeg joke there were but two seasons, Winter and Construction. I think this was in reference to road maintenance. In NZ these days I feel like we have two: Drought and Mudslide.
- tragictrash 5y ago
  I needed this today, thanks!
- pvarangot 5y ago
  That's hilarious. I lived with a really cold winter and it's not only road maintenance. If you have to do some renovations at your place they sometimes also need to happen on "construction" season, even if it's inside a lot of construction workers go to other places in the winter.
- sizzzzlerz 5y ago
  L.A. boasts of three seasons: Drought, mudslide, and wildfire.
- dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
  Actually it's 4: 1)Winter 2)More winter 3)Still winter and 4)Construction.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    And also not exclusive to Winterpeg. It's used in many other parts of Canada as well. Construction season alternatively being named "orange cone season" as well as the roads are full of them.
LawnGnome 5y ago
The Noongar of south western Australia denote six seasons: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/nyoongar.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/nyoongar.shtml
- com 5y ago
  Makuru was much more suitable than “winter” for the climate in Perth: time to rug up and settle in for cosy nights with your loved ones. I wish the Noongar seasons were more often used in the south west of Australia by everybody, so much more suitable than European seasons shifted 6 months!
rightbyte 5y ago
Every place with wet season maybe?
throwawayboise 5y ago
Astronomically it seems to make the most sense, you have two solstices and two equinoxes dividing the year into four parts.
jfk13 5y ago
Apparently the Sami (Lapps) have/had 8 seasons. https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Eight-Seasons-story-Lapps/dp/9174420003 https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Eight-Seasons-story-Lapps/dp...
- e12e 5y ago
  Indeed: https://www.samisiida.no/en/b/the-eight-sami-seasons https://www.samisiida.no/en/b/the-eight-sami-seasons
- zarzavat 5y ago
  Do they have months as well? Once you get to 8 it seems like you could just as well call them long months than short seasons.
Lordarminius 5y ago
> Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons? Sub saharan people (and many Asian), have two seasons, rainy and dry.
magicroot75 5y ago
Can't we use Structured Equation Modeling or ML to cluster seasons based on actual data?
andi999 5y ago
Thailand has 3 seasons. Hot, cold and rainy season. The emerald buddha has three different sets of clothing to match the seasons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Buddha https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Buddha
lIIIllllIIII 5y ago
Australian indigenous people. Varying numbers of seasons, I'm guessing depending on the climate in which they live. http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/climate_culture/Indig_seasons.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/climate_culture/Indig_seasons.shtm...
yyyk 5y ago
I can't think of an ancient Middle Eastern culture with 4 seasons. Hittites had 3, various Mesopotamian cultures had 2. It really only made sense in Europe to divide into 4.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

piethesailorman 5y ago

I recently read about the Hindu seasons. Here is an off the cusp search result on the subject. https://www.learnreligions.com/the-six-seasons-of-india-p2-1770072 https://www.learnreligions.com/the-six-seasons-of-india-p2-1...

Karawebnetwork 5y ago

"Sekki is the traditional way of expressing seasons in Japan. There are 24 sekki, including rikka (立夏, the first day of summer) in early May, shoman (小満, lit. “a little full” as in growing, waxing) in late May and boshu (芒種, lit. bearded grain) in early June. The 24 sekki can be further divided into three for a total of 72 shijijūni ko (七十二侯) that last for about five days each. These subseasons include mugi no toki itaru (麦秋至), or “the time for wheat has come,” which lasts from May 31 to June 5, and kamakiri shozu (“the mantis is born”) from June 6 to June 10. " https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/just-how-many-seasons-does-japan-really-have https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/just-how-... The full list is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar#The_24_sekki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar#The_24_sekki There used to be a maintained shared Google Calendar you could use that would display those in your agenda. While the names did not fit exactly with my local weather, it was interesting to give a name to small parts of the year. It felt very natural and intuitive.

yowlingcat 5y ago
I love this. Ever since moving back into the wild from the city, it's been so nice to take notice of all the little "microseasons" you'll see inside a usual season. I took it for granted as a kid, but as an adult, it's nice to name and partake in the various parts of the year as you mention.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago

From my perspective, anything regularly periodic in nature is used to track time: the Sun (years, seasons, days, day/dusk) and Moon (months, weeks, King tides). Consider even the starfield (astrology: years, decades+). Four seasons makes sense in all of these contexts, and I hypothesize that there are a lot of patterns in nature that are well bucketed into 4 sequential, equal seasons. This is impossible for me to demonstrate, unfortunately. Also, division by by 4 and 12, a year into four seasons is like a month into four weeks. Weeks seem to me to be among our most subjective fundamental time unit. I see weeks as being the most arbitrary. I always like to imagine what life would be like if weeks were 3 days long. Or 11. I just love this topic.

dotancohen 5y ago
> I always like to imagine what life would be like if weeks were 3 days long. Or 11. I just love this topic. I especially like that you chose prime numbers. A week composed of a prime number of days will remain the smallest indivisible group of days that a culture will have.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  Agreed, glad you called this out! I was thinking about rambling about this, but this is a topic I can go on and on about, and I was already off to a slow start today...
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    Please ramble! I've actually though much about this as well. It kind of forces a "holy day" because without one nothing fits into one week with any period other than "every day" or "every week" - be that week 5 or 7 or 11 days. I've heard that the seven day week was independently developed at least three times in ancient times across disparate cultures as well.
- joebob42 5y ago
  Well, maybe, except that months are sometimes prime numbers and we subdivide them anyways, right? I guess weeks don't exactly subdivide months, they're sort of separate systems?

Someone 5y ago

> Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons? Ancient Egyptian :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar: “The ancient Egyptian calendar – a civil calendar – was a solar calendar with a 365-day year. The year consisted of three seasons of 120 days each, plus an intercalary month of five epagomenal days treated as outside of the year proper. Each season was divided into four months of 30 days.”

aaronharnly 5y ago
So, a better calendar than ours :(
- shagie 5y ago
  The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.) - https://youtu.be/fD-R35DSSZY https://youtu.be/fD-R35DSSZY gets into the "why the year we have is designed the way it is" ... though it takes 22 minutes to get to that part. It wasn't really better as the 30 * 12 + 5 approach needed manual application of the + 5... which is what the new calendar was trying to avoid.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    I gather +536 felt longer.
drocer88 5y ago
"There are just two seasons in the old Icelandic calendar: [...] summer and winter." https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/10/21/do_you_know_your_old_icelandic_months/ https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/10/21/do_you_kn...
- jointpdf 5y ago
  The local version of this is: there are only two seasons in Michigan—winter and construction.

AlotOfReading 5y ago

India (and nearby areas) famously used/uses 6 seasons. The Mayan Haab' isn't precisely a seasonal calendar, but each of the 20 'months' was used to much the same effect.

ASalazarMX 5y ago

It's common among many ancient cultures to treat equinoxes and solstices as events of great importance, as those mark the beginning of the season change, but not all regions experience seasons the same. Ancient Egyptians, while knowledgeable of astronomy, had only three seasons: Akhet (summer/heat), Peret (flooding, of the Nile) and Shemu (harvest). Notice the conspicuous absence of winter. https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/01/28/a-year-in-three-seasons-ancient-egypts-calendar/ https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/01/28/a-year-in-three-seaso...

irrational 5y ago
Oh, when it snows in Egypt (which it does do on occasion) they definitely notice the conspicuous absence of winter.
walrus01 5y ago
In particular the traditional Persian new year (Nowruz) starts in spring, and is celebrated throughout central asia as far as Kazakhstan.
- layer8 5y ago
  The roman calendar started the year in spring as well with March (hence the names September/October/November/December are literally the 7th/8th/9th/10th month). The Greek apparently were all over the place with the year starting in summer/fall/winter depending on region/polis.
  - devman0 5y ago
    I'd heard this was because July and August (for Julius and Augustus) were added later to the calendar and originally there were only 10 months that started with January.
    - layer8 5y ago
      I believe those were merely renamed, and the original year was 10 months from March to December, with a nondescript “winter” period between December and March.

divbzero 5y ago

Another phenomenon I’ve found curious is the cross-cultural definition of a week as roughly a quarter moon, and correlated names for days of the week. [1] Sunday Sun Sōlis Hēlíou 日曜日 Monday Moon Lūnae Selḗnēs 月曜日 Tuesday Mars Mārtis Áreōs 火曜日 Wednesday Mercury Mercuriī Hermoû 水曜日 Thursday Jupiter Iovis Diós 木曜日 Friday Venus Veneris Aphrodítēs 金曜日 Saturday Saturn Sāturnī Krónou 土曜日 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week

thechao 5y ago
There's some ... but I think it misses two really important ones (and this is just off the top of my head): 1. The Romans had an eight day "week"; and, 2. The mesoamericans had a 260 day "week" (or, at best, interlocking 13 and 20 day "weeks"). I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >The Romans had an eight day "week"; and, The Beatles were Romans!
  - mbg721 5y ago
    So were the B-52's, but only if you wanted to.
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world. The 7-day week originated in Sumerian Babylon culture from 2100 BC and has to do with quartering moon phases. I worry when seeing many things attributed to "Judeo-Christian culture" which actually originated from other cultures, many aspects of what's in "Judeo-Christian culture" including perhaps some of the key stories in the Old Testament like the Flood appear to have been copied or at least inspired by stories from Sumerian culture which was considered the 'high culture' of the region.

tigerlily 5y ago

I once heard Canadians in Winnipeg joke there were but two seasons, Winter and Construction. I think this was in reference to road maintenance. In NZ these days I feel like we have two: Drought and Mudslide.

tragictrash 5y ago
I needed this today, thanks!
pvarangot 5y ago
That's hilarious. I lived with a really cold winter and it's not only road maintenance. If you have to do some renovations at your place they sometimes also need to happen on "construction" season, even if it's inside a lot of construction workers go to other places in the winter.
sizzzzlerz 5y ago
L.A. boasts of three seasons: Drought, mudslide, and wildfire.
dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
Actually it's 4: 1)Winter 2)More winter 3)Still winter and 4)Construction.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  And also not exclusive to Winterpeg. It's used in many other parts of Canada as well. Construction season alternatively being named "orange cone season" as well as the roads are full of them.

LawnGnome 5y ago

The Noongar of south western Australia denote six seasons: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/nyoongar.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/nyoongar.shtml

com 5y ago
Makuru was much more suitable than “winter” for the climate in Perth: time to rug up and settle in for cosy nights with your loved ones. I wish the Noongar seasons were more often used in the south west of Australia by everybody, so much more suitable than European seasons shifted 6 months!

rightbyte 5y ago

Every place with wet season maybe?

throwawayboise 5y ago

Astronomically it seems to make the most sense, you have two solstices and two equinoxes dividing the year into four parts.

jfk13 5y ago

Apparently the Sami (Lapps) have/had 8 seasons. https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Eight-Seasons-story-Lapps/dp/9174420003 https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Eight-Seasons-story-Lapps/dp...

e12e 5y ago
Indeed: https://www.samisiida.no/en/b/the-eight-sami-seasons https://www.samisiida.no/en/b/the-eight-sami-seasons
zarzavat 5y ago
Do they have months as well? Once you get to 8 it seems like you could just as well call them long months than short seasons.

Lordarminius 5y ago

> Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons? Sub saharan people (and many Asian), have two seasons, rainy and dry.

magicroot75 5y ago

Can't we use Structured Equation Modeling or ML to cluster seasons based on actual data?

andi999 5y ago

Thailand has 3 seasons. Hot, cold and rainy season. The emerald buddha has three different sets of clothing to match the seasons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Buddha https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Buddha

lIIIllllIIII 5y ago

Australian indigenous people. Varying numbers of seasons, I'm guessing depending on the climate in which they live. http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/climate_culture/Indig_seasons.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/climate_culture/Indig_seasons.shtm...

yyyk 5y ago

I can't think of an ancient Middle Eastern culture with 4 seasons. Hittites had 3, various Mesopotamian cultures had 2. It really only made sense in Europe to divide into 4.