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Hawaii’s World
EVIDENCE is compelling that we screwed up all over the world last Dec. 31/Jan. 1. We tooted horns and set off fireworks to celebrate the beginning of the 21st Century and the Third Millennium and the ending of the old ones. Third Millennium
starts MondayWe were right to celebrate the advent of the Year 2000, but the other two events won't come until this Sunday and Monday.
Comedian Bill Sage was the first person to set me right on this. My wife and I had celebrated, too -- and enjoyed it.
The Encyclopedia Britannica confirms Sage. It devotes 17 full pages -- some 17,000 words -- to describe the mess history made of calendar systems.
Everybody recognized an annual cycle of the sun and seasons. Everybody saw a need to keep track in some systematic way.
But doing it was something else. Those who made a stab at it included Greeks, Jews, Egyptians, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas and North American Indians.
Naturally, none of the calendars agreed. Worse, great errors accumulated.
The calendars threw religious and civil life schedules into turmoil as the errors accumulated. Historical and scientific work also was affected. Successive astronomers tried to be more exact in their observations but their equipment was limited.
The Julian calendar, the basis for our present calendar, figured the year at 365.25 days. The error was only 11 minutes and 14 seconds per year.
BUT even that was too much. Over 1,000 years the cumulative error was seven days. All calendars became increasingly out of phase with the seasons -- many far worse than the Julian calendar.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII looked back on the advice astronomers had supplied over several centuries and decided the Julian calendar had to be revised.
This was the one worked out by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. Many other systems were still in use, too, but the pope took the lead in influencing the Christian world.
Pope Gregory's decree worked in an extra day every fourth February (leap years) to keep us in sync with the sun.
The system also created leap centuries when the number was divisible by four. We had a Feb. 29 in 2000, whereas the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 did not -- all in the interest of solar accuracy. Even so, we will have gained one day on the sun by the year 4316.
Slowly, over still more centuries, the Gregorian system has come to prevail.
Now we turn back to Dionysius Exiguus (Denis the Little). In the 6th Century he took the year we now call 532 A.D. as a base point, counting forward from the birth of Christ as 1 A.D.
THE preceding years he designated backward from 1 B.C. Pope Gregory XIII incorporated these into his calendar revision.
Now note an important thing. Dionysius Exiguus had no ZERO year. From 1 B.C. his calendar advances into 1 A.D. This meant the first century ran through 100 A.D. and the second century did not start until 101 A.D.
Fast forward now! The year 2000 is clearly a part of the 20th Century and the Second Millennium. It's a fast-fading part whose demise we can get nostalgic over before midnight Sunday.
Then we can turn in the flick of a second to celebrate the FOR REAL start of the 21st Century and the Third Millennium. These are the ones we mistakenly toasted nearly a year ago. Oh my! We'll just have to do it again.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.