Timekeeping on Mars

[nemorathwald]

I enjoy learning about subjects that show me how arbitrary everything is that's been handed down to us by prophets and priests and kings and Microsoft and so forth. There is a sort of future shock that one can experience in this, to realize that most of the current underpinnings of culture are groundless and may as well be something else. Something better. One such subject is timekeeping. Before the Roman emperors started re-naming months after themselves, Rome had a consistent system for naming months. The Sept in September stands for 7, and Oct, Nov, and Dec mean 8, 9, and 10 respectively. "Ember" meant winter. This made more sense before somebody decreed that the month named after him (January) be bumped up two places to be the first, which made them really the 9th through 12th months, and they didn't get renamed because no emperor wanted to be last. Imagine we can start over on Mars. Here's a hypothetical system which happens to be a conglomeration of my favorite pieces from the systems currently devised by a wide variety of science fiction authors. You can read more about the available proposals on The Martian Time Survey. (Warning, some images of Mars personified are not work-safe.)

The 24-month calendar year (because Mars takes more or less twice as long to circle the sun as we do) begins on the vernal equinox, a standard astronomical reference point. An anno (Martian year) has 24 months of 28 sols (Martian days) each for 672 sols per anno. Every even-numbered anno except for multiples of seventy is skip anno, in which the last month has only 21 sols, for 655 sols per skip anno.

Days of the Martian week are named after astronomical bodies. Solisol, Mercusol, Vensol, Terrsol, Martsol, Jovsol, and Satursol.

Month naming convention based on Latin words for seasons with numeric prefixes:
Vernalis, Duvernal, Trivernal, Quadvernal, Pentvernal, Hexvernal, Aestas, Duestas, Triestas, Quadrestas, Pentestas, Hexestas, Autumnus, Duautumn, Triautumn, Quadrautumn, Pentautumn, Hexautumn, Unember, Duember, Triember, Quadrember, Pentember, Hexember.

Comments

[phecda.livejournal.com]

January is actually named for the roman god Janus, who is two faced, and sees both into the future and into the past. January was the first month of the new year.

July got it's name from Julius Ceasar and August from Augustus Ceasar.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

"it's" only has an apostrophe when it is the contraction of "it is".

the possessive form is "its" with no apostrophe.

we now return you to your formerly scheduled conversation.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I have to schedule conversations with the guy whose house I live in. How ironic. :)

[phecda.livejournal.com]

Well, we don't seem to have much overlap in social time. Now, admittedly, the best housemate is the one you hardly know is there (and pays rent on time ;-), but still, I'm rarely home on the weekends, and you're rarely home during the week.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I needed to check up all of my facts. Why is it that the 9th through 12th months are named after 7 through 10?

[phecda.livejournal.com]

From this link:

"The Romans borrowed parts of their earliest known calendar from the Greeks. The calendar consisted of 10 months in a year of 304 days. The Romans seem to have ignored the remaining 61 days, which fell in the middle of winter. The 10 months were named Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. The last six names were taken from the words for five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. Romulus, the legendary first ruler of Rome, is supposed to have introduced this calendar in the 700's B.C.E.

"According to tradition, the Roman ruler Numa Pompilius added January and February to the calendar. This made the Roman year 355 days long. To make the calendar correspond approximately to the solar year, Numa also ordered the addition every other year of a month called Mercedinus. Mercedinus was inserted after February 23 or 24, and the last days of February were moved to the end of Mercedinus. In years when it was inserted, Mercedinus added 22 or 23 days to the year."

And now you know. :-)

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this link! It's great!

[azetidine.livejournal.com]

I'm curious: What is the reasoning behind using newly-coined words "sol" and "anno" for "day" and "year" instead of the old standbys? One would think that people are perfectly capable of adjusting the concepts for "day" and "year" in context.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Earth would still exist and there would still be people on it. For them, a year would remain the length of time it takes for Earth to go around the sun, and a day would remain the time it takes for Earth to spin once. They would no doubt communicate with people on Mars to describe how many "years" old people were and how many "years" in duration things were. It would only be confusing for a Mars resident to say he was 24 years old when in reality he is about double that number of years old. He's 24 annos old and 48 years old. The same applies to days.