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We systematically underestimate the wisdom of the ancients. The sophistication of that 19-year lunar cycle bespeaks centuries of noodling on the problem, to sa
by smitty1e 4y ago
We systematically underestimate the wisdom of the ancients.
The sophistication of that 19-year lunar cycle bespeaks centuries of noodling on the problem, to say nothing of the skill on display executing the construction.
- IncRnd 4y agoWho underestimates the wisdom of the ancients?
- smitty1e 4y agoPeople, generally.
- IncRnd 4y agoWhy do you believe that is what people generally believe? I've found the opposite. We range from children learning what was discovered by ancients to people squabbling about forms of government invented and given form thousands of years ago all the way to people searching youtube for videos on the secrets of ancient knowledge. There are many other calendars across the world that are no longer in use and are not as "in line" with how we track the days and years today in the same way as this calendar was different.
- smitty1e 4y ago"Sure, but the ancients didn't have smart phones, so how much could they know?"--unstated consensus. Personal contention: humans nature is roughly constant over time. The technology provides a veneer of improvement.
- fortran77 4y agoJews around the world today still use a very similar lunar-solar calendar.
- smitty1e 4y agoDate math around the Gregorian calendar is painful enough. Trying to write code around this beast would really bite. Even though it mostly repeats every 19 years, one senses that better precision would have bonus day every few centuries or so, just to keep things exciting.
- fortran77 4y agoThere's several packages that handle this, for example: https://pypi.org/project/pyluach/ https://pypi.org/project/pyluach/