Mapping Time : The Calendar and Its History

Oxford University Press, Oxford, first edition, 1998. Cloth, 8vo,. xxi, 438 pp, ills. From the blurb - "Calendars are based on the succession of days and nights, punctuated by the waxing and waning of the moon and by the rhythms of the seasons. All of the ancient ones were lunar- based and while some of these were eventually adjusted to take account of the seasons (lunisolar calendars) others abandoned the moon, leading to the development of solar calendars. Without an understanding of the regularity of the motions of the sun and the moon to guide them, our remote ancestors had no way of planning ahead: their experience of time could have been no more than a succession of days and moons and seasons. Only after they had learnt to count and do simple arithmetic, and after many nights of careful observation of the heavens, did the calendar begin to take shape. Mapping Time is an account for the general reader of the history and underlying basis of each of the most important calendars of the world, from antiquity to modem times. Its scope is nothing less than grand, with chapters on the nature of calendars and on their astronomical background, on the history of writing and counting, on the week, and on the history of calendar reform. There are descriptions of historic calendars, of those devised by the Egyptians, the Mayans, the Aztecs, and other civilizations, of the short-lived French Republican calendar, which introduced a ten-day week, and of our present-day Gregorian calendar. Very Good in Very Good dustwrapper.