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Nora Carroll Photography/Getty Images
Nora Carroll Photography/Getty Images
Lunar New Year started on Saturday, February 10th.
But have you ever stopped and wondered why it is celebrated at this time of year, or where the current Chinese calendar came from?
Space historian Osnat Katz Moon says there are three main types of calendars used to track time around the world.
- solar calendar It tracks the position of the sun in the sky and is used today in many parts of the world in the form of the Gregorian calendar.
- lunar calendar Track the phases of the moon. The moon follows the phases of the moon. The Islamic calendar is one example.
- lunisolar calendar Tracks both the sun and the moon. The Chinese calendar is one example.
Because calendars track time differently, there are multiple New Year holidays, including New Year’s Day, which falls on January 1st of each year, and Lunar New Year, which typically falls from late January to late February.
Planetary scientist Emily Lakdawala says calendars are for planning the future. They help plan everything from the year’s cultural events to agricultural seasons and harvests. “Unless you’re trying to plan for future events, there’s no reason to name days or months or divide the year into segments,” she says.
Katz-Moon also notes that the question of which calendar people kept throughout history was “quite controversial because historically calendars were tied to a sense of identity.” This is evidenced by the fact that he lost 11 days in the riots that occurred after England switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
On the surface, various calendars may seem very different from each other.
But scientific historian Giannamar Giovannetti-Singh says the Gregorian and Chinese calendars, for example, have a common history going back hundreds of years.
In the mid-1600s, Jesuit missionary Martino Martini visited China. The country is known for its extensive and thorough historical record, and Martini’s trip was a fact-finding mission. For decades, the Catholic Church has sought to better understand the timeline of Biblical history, including the Flood surrounding Noah’s Ark.
At the same time, China was facing a crisis.
Drought and famine were occurring in many parts of the country, and the Ming Dynasty was on the brink of collapse. “It was an astronomical crisis, or even a calendrical crisis, because the end of a dynasty essentially meant that a celestial mission was available,” he says. . “In this situation, astronomy becomes absolutely critical to political victory.”
During this perilous period, another missionary presented the Ming emperor with a version of the Gregorian calendar. The emperor quickly adopted this rule during his final years as ruler, including dates of cultural significance such as Lunar New Year. And once the Qing dynasty seized power, Giovanetti-Shin said, they were keen to continue using it. This is because the Qing dynasty enabled them to more accurately predict celestial anomalies such as solar eclipses, thereby strengthening their supposed mission from heaven to rule.
Over time, the Chinese government came to be seen as a prosperous agricultural leader. About 100 years later, Europe was devastated by the Seven Years’ War, which, according to Giovanetti-Sin, was fought primarily on agricultural land and led to a grain crisis and famine.
“It was in this context that a group of French reformists, physiocrats, began to point to China as a model for rebuilding European agriculture and understanding Chinese agriculture,” he said. To tell. “They say you need to understand the Chinese calendar and Chinese astronomy.”
But instead of adopting the precise agricultural sciences and astronomy that could be derived from the Chinese calendar, European leaders adopted Chinese cultural practices. “So this is quite literally borrowing a concept from Chinese astronomy and translating it into European politics,” Giovanetti-Sin says. They hoped that doing so would strengthen their authority, much like the Spring Festival at the beginning of the Lunar New Year, when the Chinese emperor plows the fields each year.
Unfortunately, the French crown prince’s work in tilling the soil did not have the same effect.
“We cannot satisfy the grain crisis that is hitting France at this time,” says Giovanetti-Sin. “After the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor perform the ceremony, a direct link between everything Catholic and everything Chinese begins to emerge, which is actually not very good for them.”
Perhaps this is a lesson for all of us. Even the most mundane tools for our daily lives have the power to move history.
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Today’s episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. Edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Britt Hanson confirmed the facts. The audio engineer was TKTKTK.
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