For something that’s meant to lend order to our lives, the modern Western calendar has a messy history. The mess, in part, comes about because of the difficulty of coordinating the orbits of celestial bodies with the cycles of day and night, and the passage of the seasons.
The year measured by the Earth’s orbit around the sun is roughly an unruly 365.2422 days. The moon is likewise not a fan of whole numbers. In the space of a year, there are around 12.3683 lunar months. Societies have traditionally tried to make sure that the same seasons lined up with the same months.
+INFO: Fast Company
+IMATGES: Fast Company
