The international fixed calendar is a great example of a calendar that is completely regular. 13*28=364 Plus one spare day that rests outside the other thirteen months. Every month is exactly four weeks, which makes everything much easier to deal with
That appears to be one of the mayan calendars. (13 months of 28 days + the 'day out of time'.) The other is a 260 day cycle. (13 x 20 - I know this has some significance, but I forget what, precisely. Then again, the full mayan calendar appears to track the rotation of our solar system around the galactic plane. This is the actual significance of December 21st 2012, when all those disasters were predicted because the calendar 'ends'.)
Ah, but my planet has two moons. Actually I used dubious astronomy to deal with that, by saying that the moons orbit in opposite directions and along slightly different planes. (that's really unlikely in general, but for a body to orbit in the opposite direction to another one suggests a major impact event that could also throw off the orbital plane.) So the associated calendar doesn't measure lunar phases, but it measures orbital crossings. (which I suppose constitute an eclipse, with one moon directly in front of the other.) Hey, who says a calendar on another planet has to follow exactly the same principles as one for earth? And in general we have no existing point of reference for how a calendar would function with multiple moons, because we only have one moon. Anyway, I'm not actually sure my existing calendar definitions make sense, but then I haven't gotten around to doing this worldbuilding stuff properly just yet...
Sounds interesting. Another solution would be to have synchronized moons. If they have the same orbit, doesn't matter if they follow the same line or have different "planes", the way you count lunar cycles is the same. You get one count for both moons. Not a common thing to happen but not as unlikely. I did this for my huge satellite. So in my case, they are synced by men made design.
Ummm, all this kinda stuff, biomes and climates, government systems, economics, belief systems, conlang stuff, magic systems, culture development, anything at all really!
I'm gonna pimp out this channel so hard; you put in the work and provided the resources to make a big problem for fantasy writers into a little one. You deserve a good return on your investment.
You call that messy? Once I built a very accurate lunisolar calendar for Earth, with all its irregularities. It had cycles upon cycles in months and days and centuries and it was a mess. It made those leap months seem like nothing! Also, base 12 time really needs to happen. Or 36:36:36.
Yay, more conlanging next. In fact, I have in my house a book filled with notes on my own conlang, Oqwe, as well as a pile of paper, on which is written the orbital data of habitable planets around a bunch of stars in a galaxy I created from scratch. All thanks to you, Artifexian!
DMs: "Don't build lore your players will never run into, it's a waste." Worldbuilders: "So we'll just redefine what day and hour even mean and not tell a soul."
Your videos really are super helpful and I'm so glad you're back to doing them. Helped me more than a few times writing my next novel, now I'm a couple thousand words in and I feel like I've had an actual background to paint characters on
SolidLink64 I think Oa uses base 12. I wonder what their numerals look like. Are they derived from tally marks, the word for the number, or something else?
Fetch26291 i wonder if it would have some verbal idiosyncrasies like english, while we use base 10, we call 11 eleven not oneteen or firstteen, and 12 twelve not twoteen or secondteen
Hey Edgar. Great video, so glad you're back. This worldbuilding series helped me greatly in establishing the universe for the story I'm writing. There is one thing I'm working on, which is difficult. That would be the positions of the celestial objects in the sky relative to the observer on the planet they're standing on. Just a bit of added realism to make the planet feel real and alive. I might be able to figure it out for myself. But, I think it'll be an interesting idea for worldbuilding!
The calendar series has been surprisingly interesting. I've never really thought about how something as simple as time could be so closely related to culture. It's definitely given me a lot to think about, especially as a short story I'm writing is set on a tidally locked planet, which effectively has no days. As always, your editing style and commentary make your videos among the most watchable in my subscription box, even if it is just a lot of numbers ;). In the spirit of the recent solar eclipse, could you perhaps do a video on similar big solar events, the conditions necessary to support them and the effects they may have on culture? I suppose transits, conjunctions, blood moons, regular comets, meteor showers and fluctuations in the intensity of the star would come under the same bracket, along with anything more inspired you can think of. Maybe something involving binary stars or multiple moons. As always, you are a pleasure to watch and your videos are extremely thought-provoking. Thank you, Artifexian.
Just in case anyone is interested in doing this themselves, that 'brute force' bit could be completed in one, automatic, step with the 'goal seek' function on excel. Just as long as the cells are linked, goal seek on the cell you would otherwise be 'brute forcing', and set one of the cells to whatever value you would like. If it's possible, it'll find it, otherwise, it'll leave you as close as possible, to as many decimal places as you've set the cell to default to. Good luck to everyone, And thanks Edgar, I'm enjoying the new vids muchly! :)
I literally spent a couple hours watching all three of these calendars to try to form a calendar for various Star Wars planets, with the existing info, just because I was bored. This was very useful though. I'll definitely use these again if I ever need to come up with these numbers from scratch
Yay, I was just wondering when this video was going to drop. I've been thinking about how one might go about creating a lunisolar calendar for Earth, one that accurately kept track of both seasons and moon phases. What I came up with was to construct two separate solar and lunar calendars that would run side-by-side. The solar calendar would divide the year into seasons, where each season starts on an equinox or solstice (normalized so that each season has the same number of days every year, and the equinox/solstice always falls on either the first day of that season, or the last day of the previous season). The advantage of this is that you can have, say, a holiday that always falls on the same day of the year (and thus the same time of the season), so this would work well for seasonal holidays, like those related to harvest or the blooming of the first flowers. Under this solar calendar, I would have the year start on the Spring Equinox, with Spring being the first season of the year. Of course, this is only for the Northern hemisphere, so in some consideration for our friends down under, I would suggest renaming the season according to the classical elements (Spring = Air, Summer = Fire, Autumn = Earth, Winter = Water). That way, those in the Southern hemisphere could still refer to, e.g. the season of "Air", even though for them it is actually autumn, not spring. The lunar calendar would be divided into months as one would expect, with each month starting on a new moon. When the months don't line up exactly with the solar year (which will be most of the time), I'm not sure if the first month should start _before_ the end of the year or _after_. The lunar calendar could be used to track cultural holidays that are less dependent on the seasons. Of course, there's also the third, weekly calendar. Nobody really thinks about that that much. But I'm curious how long it would take for all three of these calendars to realign themselves. Or, how long would it take for them to realign themselves on some arbitrary first day of the year? To make this even more interesting, let's say that the solar calendar uses the tropical year (which is all about the seasons, so that makes perfect sense), while the lunar calendar uses the sidereal year (which is about the position of the stars, and is about 20 minutes longer than the tropical year). How long would it take for everything to realign under these condition? We could designate this as another unit of time, an "era" or "eon" or something.
I was going through the entire process of making a calendar (star, planet, moon(s)), and in my exhausted fury, I forced a lunisolar calendar. I was changing the lunar orbiting distance by tenths of an Earth radius. I needed that perfection and now it slightly frustrates me that the only way to get any sort of disorder would either be to remake it all, or force in leap months. Both options are equally frustrating. CURSE YOU EDGAR FOR FORCING MY HAND. jk ily Arti. I'm glad i went through it all.
Really appreciate this guide, its super interesting. However, I'm kind of confused as to how seasons would line up in this calendar form. Would winter end in a different month when there's a intercalary year added? Wouldn't that mess up the seasons for the next year? Any help is appreciated
It would and it does. Cultures who used this calendar have however adapted to that and use a solar calendar for those purposes, whenever it became a problem, but since we are talking about only a couple of days difference, it doesn't really matter. Also, since there's a leap year about every 3 years, the difference between the solar and lunisolar year is almost fully reset every 3 years, and completely(ish) reset every 19 years.
The purpose of a lunisolar calendar is to measure seasons with waxing and waning of the moon, just like how a 365-day calendar measures seasons with rising and setting of the sun. So the intercalary year is basically the same thing as a leap year, it is added to prevent the seasons from getting messed up.
In a lunisolar calendar, seasons will gradually start to go out of phase with months until there’s an intercalary year, when they get back to how they were. So yes, between intercalary month and the next year the seasons will fall in different days, but not by a lot, and next year it’ll start drifting back.
@@felipevasconcelos6736 the way you phrased that, it sounds like you said that the calendar will drift further and further until it's off by an entire year, and then it's correct again.
I know that I'm a few years late, but just in case new people like me are watching this video and didn't catch the words at 8:14: ":: I know 12:36:48 is actually 01:00:00. I just wanted to write 12, 36, and 48 on screen. Also, I wanted to draw a digital click! ::"
You might not remember but like ages ago you went to willow park school for science week and told the kids about what you do and world-building I was one of those kids and I have been watching you since thank you for making me love world building
But if you have multiple moons, do you have to track all the moons in the Lunisolar calendar, or could you make multiple calendars based on which moon(s) are used?
Artifexian I created a world with two moons, one with a say 7.6 day orbit and another with a 16 day orbit. Used the farther one I belive for my calender and got 6 day weeks, 18 day or so months, 21 months with a 22 every 10 years and a few special days thag exist outside the months. Any thoughts? Should I have used both the moons or the closer one?
It depends of what you call stable, honestly. A retrograde moon is technically not as stable as eventually it will leave or crash, but it would still be able to keep track easily.
Just wanted to throw a little trivia here; that thirteenth month (Adar II in the Hebrew calendar) is usually added to ensure that the Nissan--the month when Pesach (Passover) occurs--always falls in the spring as stipulated in the Torah.
So excited to see a new video from you! Very very excited to see more linguistics! (Sorry to be that guy but you spelt Metonic Cycle as Metonic Cylce at the beginning)
No, no. I want people to point out my mistakes so I can call them out in the next video. We live in a time where being accurate is not valued am doing my best to make sure I don't succumb to this.
I was wondering if you would consider making a video on geography building. I have some very basic understanding of how the shapes of our continents define the weather in different parts of the world (why deserts form where they do, how hurricanes come to be...) but I'd love to see a video about how this knowledge could be applied to create a world from scratch. This would influence where the first large civilizations start to form, what problems different people around the world would have to face, it could possibly even define which zones are inhabitable or not. I started drawing some fictional maps and I started to realise the importance of where to place continents, mountains and oceans in order achieve the desired climate zones in my world.
He he he, CGP Grey there at 9:12. Since to see him again. Unfortunately, he has not put out anything reasonable in a while. Anyways, thanks for the video, Edgar! Lunisolar calendars are the best. I think the Buddhist calendar is a lunisolar one.
A while back I was into dozenal and thought that base 12 was really the way to go. However, I'm not so sure anymore that base 12 is actually better than base 10. This mostly comes down to gaining a slightly easier divisibility for 3 at the expense of really difficult divisibility by 5. Now I think that senary (base 6) is the best of the bunch. Not only does it have almost all of the advantages of base 12, but it also has easy divisibility test for both 5 _and_ 7, meaning that base 6 handles the first four prime numbers fairly gracefully. The only real drawback is how small base 6 is; the same number in decimal would require more digits to represent in senary. Think about trying to memorize phone numbers when they need three or four extra digits. The solution to this is to compress base 6 into base 36 somehow, which would result in numbers that had far fewer digits to represent the same value. The downside is that it would make math more complicated, but that would be alleviated if the base 36 numerals were designed such that it was easy to convert between base 6 and base 36. Not that most people probably care about this, but I think it's interesting.
But if we all used a supposedly worse base, such as base 17, would there really be meaningful negative consequences to that? It would be more difficult to spontaneously calculate a fifth or third of some number, but in what non-arbitrary situation would a person need to do this? And if you're doing real scientific calculations then there is no alternative to performing all of the necessary mathematical operations and memorizing all of the multiplication tables, which is pretty much the same thing in any base. Also, would a smaller base really result in numbers being more difficult to memorize? You'd have to memorize more total digits, but there would also be less possible digits. It's really hard, perhaps impossible, to judge number bases other than your own; for example, if the most common base was 9, would people be so familiar with the benefits of square bases that they could not imagine living without them?
i love hearing "Good morning inter web lets world build so much" :) and can you go back to doing your old video style like when ones when you worked on Oa. I like that style better then this new one. :)
There is a program I think people should use when worldbuilding and that program is SpaceEngine. Currently it is one of the best tools to use to explore not just real life stars, planets and moons but also very accurate procedural objects as well. You can also use it to make your own solar systems and galaxies like I usually do. Should talk about it one of your next videos about worldbuilding.
I've found that dividing your year in earth days by your number of months (Cell C25/E25, or using the equation =C25/E25) will give you whole numbers for the year in local days and month in local days, although that may just be my setup Edit: It seems that using an equation like =C25/(E25*X), where X is a fraction with any denominator under a power of two (Like 7/8 or 49/32) seems to work up to a certain point with certain setups, this may need more experimentation Edit 2: It seems these "perfect denominators" can be found my combining consecutive powers of two (ie 256+128=384 16+32=48 Edit 3: On further inspection, these numbers all seem to be the result of dividing or multiplying 1 by a multiple of 3 (ie 0.333... or 0.166...), still may need further experimentation
The calendar for my worldbuilding has base 60 for seconds, minutes, and hours, and there are 32 hours in a day, 48 days in a month, and 16 months in a year. Time is recorded in the format of: Century.Year.Month.Day.Hour, such as 05.64.12.08.18 - allowing for highly accurate records of when events occurred. (When a specific number is unknown, it is recorded with two X's in place of the value.
370 days, 30 days in a month. Years come in triplets based on whether the White Moon (full moon) comes on the 1st, 11th or 21st of each month. (each year ends with the ten day Midwinter) EDIT: it has to be this exact because for story reasons, the Big Thing that happens on 22 Lilymun 672 (November) is exactly 12^5 days after the Big Fantasy Historic Prologue Battle on 10 Miramun 0 (May)
Could you do an entry on creating multisolar/multilunar calendars? It would be interesting to see options for calendars tracking any number of objects, perhaps breaking away from the constriction of the uses of even the terms "month" and "year".
I probably won't do a video on this because the info in these videos can be applied to multiple star/moons systems. And also it would be kinda boring. Think about it, in a close binary star system - the stars will be so close together such that it wouldn't make any sense to track both. People would think of them as a single star for the purposes of calendar building. In a distant binary pair the stars will be so far away that tracking the distant companion would be like tracking background stars - not very meaningful imo. In both cases, I'd imagine cultures would develop calendars similar to ours. In the case of multiple moons, I gave you guys the basic info in the last video - you should be able to extrapolate from there. And if you do please comment and let me know what you came up with. Always super eager to hear about peoples creations.
@@Artifexian Hello Edgar. I know this is a bit of an old comment, but I actually did build something similar for a worldbuilding project. A bit of background: the setting is essentially a frontier colony which has devolved to a WH40K esque neo-feudal state. The homeworld for the main faction, Tahresh, is in a really weird situation. It is the outermost major moon of a brown dwarf, orbiting over Half an AU away from it. It also has two major moons orbiting it real close, with an orbital period of 7 and 33 days each. Tahresh orbits around the Brown Dwarf every 637 days. Now this brown dwarf itself orbits a young, extremely massive O1 type star which is around 160 Solar Masses, completing an orbit every 2146647.6 Earth days. The calendar of the empire tracks both the Brown Dwarf and the moons. There is a Lunar cycle with weeks tracked by the phases of the inner moon and the months by those of the outer moon. There are 11 months of 33 days and 1 intercalary day to ensure that every year begins when both moons are at the peak of their brightness. Similarly, the solar cycle begins when both suns (Brown dwarf and O type) are at their closest apparent position in the sky. A year has 4 solar cycles and 7 lunar cycles. Every 3 years, another intercalary day is added to the year, and every 63 solar cycles, a day is omitted from the solar cycle to keep the calendar in line. Most of the orbital data for this was calculated via the Worldsmith. Thank you so much for that.
This is very interesting. In my conworld, though, I guess most civilizations won't keep track of the moon in their calendars, because it's so small and dark (due to great distance and low albedo) it's barely visible.
This video made me so happy!! I’m a jewish high fantasy author & my main culture is heavily based on jewish culture & jewish holidays so i desperately needed this!
7:20, have the lengths of the weeks alternate, and a good mnemonic would be to call particular ones 'even or odd' (binary?) to know which one you're in by the date
One thing to keep in mind is seconds are scientific. Under 1 atm, it takes 1ml (weighing 1 gram) of water to heat up 1 degree celsius by applying 1 calorie in 1 second. This 1ml of water also has the dimensions of 1cm x 1cm x 1cm. If you're planet has similar laws of physics and your people's culture makes them want a scientific measuring system, you should work up from seconds, not down from hours per day.
Evil Paragon 2 well science didn’t create the seconds, calories aren’t real units and neither are atmospheres, both are just consonant times a SI unit, so changing the constants fixes everything
My one true base is base 16 and 8 because powers of two for the win!! Also, since a circle is divided into 360 degrees and is closely linked to the year, how do you divide a circle?
I agree with Artifexian about 12, though I will admit that 16 and 8's relationship with the power of two is cool. XD Sadly I divide by 3 more often than I need the square root of something. DX Also just use radians for dividing a circle. 2 radians make a whole rotation so even base 2 can reproduce radians (relatively) easily (compared to 360 degrees). Just in case someone else doesn't know what a radian is, it is the radius of the circle multiplied by pi, which also gives half of the circles circumference.
@@CompactStar A good strategy to push base 84 would be to make a type of currency that is 1/84 of the basic unit. Things like this have happened before, for example the words "penny" and "pence" used to refer to 1/240 of a pound until they were changed to 1/100.
He uploaded a video about language evolution like 3 days ago :) I know your video was about a lunisolar calendar, but I remember that I found you both on the same day looking up some language videos so in my head there is that weird connection between you two. Both channels are really interesting and bring me joy whenever there is a new video out and it's just a fun coincidence that you both uploaded cool videos just a few days apart :)
I'm not sure what kind of calendar the clans in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series use. On the one hand, the use of the term "moons" suggests a lunar aspect, and there are special days like midsummer or midwinter, which are connected to day length and that suggests a solar aspect. Michelle Paver's website lists the moons and the equivalent months, and apparently there are only twelve. Also, the names of the months typically come from a plant or animal associated with that food source - like the Cloudberry Moon, the Moon of the Roaring Stags, or the Moon of the Salmon Run. There is also the Moon of No Dark, which is when Midsummer happens. Anyway, what do you think it could be? Also, if you're not familiar with those books, they're a fantasy series set in hunter-gatherer times and written by Michelle Paver - and personally, I consider them to be a prime example of how to worldbuild. There are a lot of references in the books to the clans' mythology, culture and belief systems, but Paver's careful to strike the balance between enough detail to show off her worldbuilding and not so much detail that it drags the story down. Plus, she often explains her research and real-life counterparts to, say, the taboo against mixing the Forest with the Sea, in the author's notes. They were one of the earliest book series I read - and the best, in my opinion - and I think you'd enjoy them.
I like this one because I enjoy calculating all the leap years and leap months and leap everything. Now I know how Pope Gregory felt. Edit: Now that I think about it, he didn't have Google Sheets, so he had to do all the calculations by hand I have way more respect for him now.
Solar calendars: I get it
Luner calendars: Seems legit
Lunisolar Calendars: wut
Ye, it's a bit trippy alright if you not familiar with the system.
Lunar
Huh more like loony sola calendar
@@theshuman100 wut
In before Solunar calendars become a thing and show up and make things 12 times worse. XD
Glad to see my people's calendar featured!
It's awesome. Well done on going with the clear and obvious best solution to timekeeping. Two massive thumbs up.
Are you chinese or hebrew
@@pas-giaw6055 Hebrew is a language, not a people....
Well, is He jewish?
@@shayne-1880 It is, in fact, both.
8:12 ":: I know 12:36:48 is actually 01:00:00. I just wanted to write 12, 36 and 48 on screen. Also, I wanted to draw a digital clock! ::"
Someone went through this frame by frame :)
or tried to catch it by pausing at regular speed (incredibly frustrating but I managed. After like 30 attempts)
This is impossible on mobile...
Birdstar nope. I did it
Tacocat god for you...?
8:46 Ahh yes the Sea of Luxembourg.
The international fixed calendar is a great example of a calendar that is completely regular.
13*28=364
Plus one spare day that rests outside the other thirteen months.
Every month is exactly four weeks, which makes everything much easier to deal with
Yup! It's a great calendar.
That appears to be one of the mayan calendars. (13 months of 28 days + the 'day out of time'.)
The other is a 260 day cycle. (13 x 20 - I know this has some significance, but I forget what, precisely. Then again, the full mayan calendar appears to track the rotation of our solar system around the galactic plane. This is the actual significance of December 21st 2012, when all those disasters were predicted because the calendar 'ends'.)
look up dave gorman calendar. hysterically funny explanation
@@Artifexian it's too solar for me
yeah, except 12 is kinda better than 13. no quarterly reports for 13 months calendar
Ah, but my planet has two moons.
Actually I used dubious astronomy to deal with that, by saying that the moons orbit in opposite directions and along slightly different planes. (that's really unlikely in general, but for a body to orbit in the opposite direction to another one suggests a major impact event that could also throw off the orbital plane.)
So the associated calendar doesn't measure lunar phases, but it measures orbital crossings. (which I suppose constitute an eclipse, with one moon directly in front of the other.)
Hey, who says a calendar on another planet has to follow exactly the same principles as one for earth?
And in general we have no existing point of reference for how a calendar would function with multiple moons, because we only have one moon.
Anyway, I'm not actually sure my existing calendar definitions make sense, but then I haven't gotten around to doing this worldbuilding stuff properly just yet...
Sounds interesting. Another solution would be to have synchronized moons. If they have the same orbit, doesn't matter if they follow the same line or have different "planes", the way you count lunar cycles is the same. You get one count for both moons. Not a common thing to happen but not as unlikely. I did this for my huge satellite. So in my case, they are synced by men made design.
He went over suggestions for multiple moons in his Lunar Calendar video, so I'd suggest checking that out if you haven't already
You should make a book of world-building stuffs someday. I'd buy it. And I'd buy it for all my writery friends. :)
That actually is a thing I'm considering doing. But it's only a pipedream at the moment.
I write many books that I soon will publish and I'm considering writing one in worldbuild, is there any subject you would like to see on it?
Ummm, all this kinda stuff, biomes and climates, government systems, economics, belief systems, conlang stuff, magic systems, culture development, anything at all really!
Great video! This calendar series was really interesting!
Great, glad you got something out of it.
I'm gonna pimp out this channel so hard; you put in the work and provided the resources to make a big problem for fantasy writers into a little one. You deserve a good return on your investment.
You call that messy? Once I built a very accurate lunisolar calendar for Earth, with all its irregularities. It had cycles upon cycles in months and days and centuries and it was a mess. It made those leap months seem like nothing! Also, base 12 time really needs to happen. Or 36:36:36.
Ye, but unfortunately I never will. People hate change. :(
I dread the massive amount of engineering and programming work needed to redefine the length of a second.
Why does everyone like base 12 so much? I personally prefer base 6.
36:36:36 is base 6. 100 hours a day, 100 minutes an hour and 100 seconds a minute in base 6.
Anybody on team Base2310?
Love me a lunisolar calendar, every day of the week.
Lunisolar FTW
Yay, more conlanging next. In fact, I have in my house a book filled with notes on my own conlang, Oqwe, as well as a pile of paper, on which is written the orbital data of habitable planets around a bunch of stars in a galaxy I created from scratch. All thanks to you, Artifexian!
DMs: "Don't build lore your players will never run into, it's a waste."
Worldbuilders: "So we'll just redefine what day and hour even mean and not tell a soul."
Your videos really are super helpful and I'm so glad you're back to doing them. Helped me more than a few times writing my next novel, now I'm a couple thousand words in and I feel like I've had an actual background to paint characters on
I'm so glad you're still making videos on this channel, no matter how sparse they may be
The main thing causing delays now is the next look. I'm still getting to grips with after effects.
"Next video will be a conlang video" EEEEEEEE 8D
Hope you enjoy;
Artifexian could you do a piece on number systems, just as rarely done thing as calamders if not more over looked
SolidLink64 I think Oa uses base 12. I wonder what their numerals look like. Are they derived from tally marks, the word for the number, or something else?
Fetch26291 i wonder if it would have some verbal idiosyncrasies like english, while we use base 10, we call 11 eleven not oneteen or firstteen, and 12 twelve not twoteen or secondteen
eeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Hey Edgar. Great video, so glad you're back. This worldbuilding series helped me greatly in establishing the universe for the story I'm writing.
There is one thing I'm working on, which is difficult. That would be the positions of the celestial objects in the sky relative to the observer on the planet they're standing on. Just a bit of added realism to make the planet feel real and alive.
I might be able to figure it out for myself. But, I think it'll be an interesting idea for worldbuilding!
FINALLY, BEEN WAITING SO LOOOOOONG YEEEEEESSS!
Sorry about that. I've been on holidays for the past few weeks.
Artifexian omg, he replied! 😊
I try and reply to as many comments as possible on the day of upload. I really like talking to you guys. :)
The calendar series has been surprisingly interesting. I've never really thought about how something as simple as time could be so closely related to culture. It's definitely given me a lot to think about, especially as a short story I'm writing is set on a tidally locked planet, which effectively has no days. As always, your editing style and commentary make your videos among the most watchable in my subscription box, even if it is just a lot of numbers ;). In the spirit of the recent solar eclipse, could you perhaps do a video on similar big solar events, the conditions necessary to support them and the effects they may have on culture? I suppose transits, conjunctions, blood moons, regular comets, meteor showers and fluctuations in the intensity of the star would come under the same bracket, along with anything more inspired you can think of. Maybe something involving binary stars or multiple moons. As always, you are a pleasure to watch and your videos are extremely thought-provoking. Thank you, Artifexian.
Just in case anyone is interested in doing this themselves, that 'brute force' bit could be completed in one, automatic, step with the 'goal seek' function on excel.
Just as long as the cells are linked, goal seek on the cell you would otherwise be 'brute forcing', and set one of the cells to whatever value you would like. If it's possible, it'll find it, otherwise, it'll leave you as close as possible, to as many decimal places as you've set the cell to default to.
Good luck to everyone,
And thanks Edgar, I'm enjoying the new vids muchly! :)
I literally spent a couple hours watching all three of these calendars to try to form a calendar for various Star Wars planets, with the existing info, just because I was bored. This was very useful though. I'll definitely use these again if I ever need to come up with these numbers from scratch
I love how you take the time to read and reply to comments. Most other youtubers don't.
Yay, I was just wondering when this video was going to drop. I've been thinking about how one might go about creating a lunisolar calendar for Earth, one that accurately kept track of both seasons and moon phases. What I came up with was to construct two separate solar and lunar calendars that would run side-by-side.
The solar calendar would divide the year into seasons, where each season starts on an equinox or solstice (normalized so that each season has the same number of days every year, and the equinox/solstice always falls on either the first day of that season, or the last day of the previous season). The advantage of this is that you can have, say, a holiday that always falls on the same day of the year (and thus the same time of the season), so this would work well for seasonal holidays, like those related to harvest or the blooming of the first flowers.
Under this solar calendar, I would have the year start on the Spring Equinox, with Spring being the first season of the year. Of course, this is only for the Northern hemisphere, so in some consideration for our friends down under, I would suggest renaming the season according to the classical elements (Spring = Air, Summer = Fire, Autumn = Earth, Winter = Water). That way, those in the Southern hemisphere could still refer to, e.g. the season of "Air", even though for them it is actually autumn, not spring.
The lunar calendar would be divided into months as one would expect, with each month starting on a new moon. When the months don't line up exactly with the solar year (which will be most of the time), I'm not sure if the first month should start _before_ the end of the year or _after_. The lunar calendar could be used to track cultural holidays that are less dependent on the seasons.
Of course, there's also the third, weekly calendar. Nobody really thinks about that that much. But I'm curious how long it would take for all three of these calendars to realign themselves. Or, how long would it take for them to realign themselves on some arbitrary first day of the year? To make this even more interesting, let's say that the solar calendar uses the tropical year (which is all about the seasons, so that makes perfect sense), while the lunar calendar uses the sidereal year (which is about the position of the stars, and is about 20 minutes longer than the tropical year). How long would it take for everything to realign under these condition? We could designate this as another unit of time, an "era" or "eon" or something.
I was going through the entire process of making a calendar (star, planet, moon(s)), and in my exhausted fury, I forced a lunisolar calendar. I was changing the lunar orbiting distance by tenths of an Earth radius. I needed that perfection and now it slightly frustrates me that the only way to get any sort of disorder would either be to remake it all, or force in leap months. Both options are equally frustrating. CURSE YOU EDGAR FOR FORCING MY HAND.
jk ily Arti. I'm glad i went through it all.
Yay you're not dead
Apparently not.
Artifexian ok, seems you posted about a month ago, I'm 2 videos behind XP. Was thinking last video was the channel on hold vid a year ago.
Can't wait for more conlanging stuff!
Chris I wonder what the next topic would be. Would it be lexicon making? Or grammar? Or something else entirely?
Airmanon I think it would be morphology.
JN Baker I see. Well, regardless of the topic, I'm looking forward to it.
Airmanon same
Really appreciate this guide, its super interesting. However, I'm kind of confused as to how seasons would line up in this calendar form. Would winter end in a different month when there's a intercalary year added? Wouldn't that mess up the seasons for the next year?
Any help is appreciated
It would and it does. Cultures who used this calendar have however adapted to that and use a solar calendar for those purposes, whenever it became a problem, but since we are talking about only a couple of days difference, it doesn't really matter. Also, since there's a leap year about every 3 years, the difference between the solar and lunisolar year is almost fully reset every 3 years, and completely(ish) reset every 19 years.
The purpose of a lunisolar calendar is to measure seasons with waxing and waning of the moon, just like how a 365-day calendar measures seasons with rising and setting of the sun. So the intercalary year is basically the same thing as a leap year, it is added to prevent the seasons from getting messed up.
In a lunisolar calendar, seasons will gradually start to go out of phase with months until there’s an intercalary year, when they get back to how they were. So yes, between intercalary month and the next year the seasons will fall in different days, but not by a lot, and next year it’ll start drifting back.
@@felipevasconcelos6736 the way you phrased that, it sounds like you said that the calendar will drift further and further until it's off by an entire year, and then it's correct again.
@@pentelegomenon1175 I meant that calendar drift will continuously build up until it’s off by about a month, and then self-correct.
Great video! Looking forward to (hopefully) some conlanging!
It'll happen. Just give me time.
Yesss, he's back !
He is.
I can't wait for the conlang video!!! Not that I dislike calendars, I just love linguistics
Comin' soon.
Back from the dead! Happy to see you again.
Yup. Glad to be back and hope you enjoyed. :)
I clicked in this so hard
Hehe :)
Same :DD
matirio salamanca I'm going to click five times harder on the conlang video
Accidentally came across this video... Time to dig out my old lunisolar calendar creation attempt!
Conlang!!!!! I thought you where only gonna do one of the two. So so happy that you decided to keep both!!!
Oh my god! Regular Uploads! Can't wait for the conlanging to return
Regular-ish. Trying my best.
Artifexian More than annually, that's good enough
Or he is teaching us about calendars so we can puzzle when the next will come out XD
O: CONLANG AGAIN YAAY. you have no idea how much your conlang vids influenced me. it is awesome
So happy that you're making videos again.
Me too.
I know that I'm a few years late, but just in case new people like me are watching this video and didn't catch the words at 8:14:
":: I know 12:36:48 is actually 01:00:00. I just wanted to write 12, 36, and 48 on screen. Also, I wanted to draw a digital click! ::"
"Metonic cylce"
I'm sorry, I needed to point that out. So sorry.
HES BACK
Yup.
Yup.
My first Artifexian video caught since subscribing. I eagerly await the next Conlang video.
Brill. I hope you enjoy it.
You're a minor math genius because even with this video it still makes my head hurt trying to do this with results I actually want.
You might not remember but like ages ago you went to willow park school for science week and told the kids about what you do and world-building I was one of those kids and I have been watching you since thank you for making me love world building
The fact that you don't speak with dental fricatives frustrates me to no end but I love your videos anyway
But if you have multiple moons, do you have to track all the moons in the Lunisolar calendar, or could you make multiple calendars based on which moon(s) are used?
Both would work but the former would be a nightmare to compute - unless the moons are in resonance in which case everything will divide neatly.
Artifexian Good point. But the decision on which moon(s) to track could say a bit about the culture that uses that calendar, right?
Artifexian I created a world with two moons, one with a say 7.6 day orbit and another with a 16 day orbit. Used the farther one I belive for my calender and got 6 day weeks, 18 day or so months, 21 months with a 22 every 10 years and a few special days thag exist outside the months. Any thoughts? Should I have used both the moons or the closer one?
Isn't it more likely that a system with multiple moons would be in resonance because it's more stable?
It depends of what you call stable, honestly. A retrograde moon is technically not as stable as eventually it will leave or crash, but it would still be able to keep track easily.
I was worried I would never see this channel upload again.
I was always gonna make more videos it was just a question of when.
I've got all of the podcast episodes downloaded.
Just wanted to throw a little trivia here; that thirteenth month (Adar II in the Hebrew calendar) is usually added to ensure that the Nissan--the month when Pesach (Passover) occurs--always falls in the spring as stipulated in the Torah.
I actually just used the equations you put into the cells, putting the local day as x in the equation to get the local day where it's needed.
So excited to see a new video from you! Very very excited to see more linguistics! (Sorry to be that guy but you spelt Metonic Cycle as Metonic Cylce at the beginning)
No, no. I want people to point out my mistakes so I can call them out in the next video. We live in a time where being accurate is not valued am doing my best to make sure I don't succumb to this.
Congratulations! You made the Chinese Traditional Calendar
I like how you made the robot CGP Grey.
Thank the lord for this channel. Never stop making videos. ;-;
I was wondering if you would consider making a video on geography building. I have some very basic understanding of how the shapes of our continents define the weather in different parts of the world (why deserts form where they do, how hurricanes come to be...) but I'd love to see a video about how this knowledge could be applied to create a world from scratch. This would influence where the first large civilizations start to form, what problems different people around the world would have to face, it could possibly even define which zones are inhabitable or not. I started drawing some fictional maps and I started to realise the importance of where to place continents, mountains and oceans in order achieve the desired climate zones in my world.
Robot CGP Grey! that was great man
ooh yeah! Conlang are my favorite episodes
Awesome. I really hope you enjoy the next video. :)
THE GOOD ARTIFEXIAN IS BACK EVERYBODY.
YESSSSSSSS.
Ridiculous time-based excitement about this new video!
Thanks man. I hope you enjoyed it. :)
9:10 - you really like that podcast huh ^^
I do love Brady. :)
Your podcast is also great :D
I'm so glad you are back.
He he he, CGP Grey there at 9:12.
Since to see him again. Unfortunately, he has not put out anything reasonable in a while.
Anyways, thanks for the video, Edgar! Lunisolar calendars are the best. I think the Buddhist calendar is a lunisolar one.
Ye, I think it is. Yup, we're in the middle of a CGP drought at the mo. Been ages since the last proper videos (not including the Las Vegas vlog).
A while back I was into dozenal and thought that base 12 was really the way to go. However, I'm not so sure anymore that base 12 is actually better than base 10. This mostly comes down to gaining a slightly easier divisibility for 3 at the expense of really difficult divisibility by 5. Now I think that senary (base 6) is the best of the bunch. Not only does it have almost all of the advantages of base 12, but it also has easy divisibility test for both 5 _and_ 7, meaning that base 6 handles the first four prime numbers fairly gracefully.
The only real drawback is how small base 6 is; the same number in decimal would require more digits to represent in senary. Think about trying to memorize phone numbers when they need three or four extra digits. The solution to this is to compress base 6 into base 36 somehow, which would result in numbers that had far fewer digits to represent the same value. The downside is that it would make math more complicated, but that would be alleviated if the base 36 numerals were designed such that it was easy to convert between base 6 and base 36.
Not that most people probably care about this, but I think it's interesting.
But if we all used a supposedly worse base, such as base 17, would there really be meaningful negative consequences to that? It would be more difficult to spontaneously calculate a fifth or third of some number, but in what non-arbitrary situation would a person need to do this? And if you're doing real scientific calculations then there is no alternative to performing all of the necessary mathematical operations and memorizing all of the multiplication tables, which is pretty much the same thing in any base. Also, would a smaller base really result in numbers being more difficult to memorize? You'd have to memorize more total digits, but there would also be less possible digits. It's really hard, perhaps impossible, to judge number bases other than your own; for example, if the most common base was 9, would people be so familiar with the benefits of square bases that they could not imagine living without them?
So glad to see more new videos.
Thanks pal. I hope you are enjoying them.
I hope you do Worldbuiling videos on Geography soon, you've got a lot of stuff on creating planets, but nothing about creating their landscapes.
i love hearing "Good morning inter web lets world build so much" :) and can you go back to doing your old video style like when ones when you worked on Oa. I like that style better then this new one. :)
The CGP Grey-Bot is fantastic.
you gotta do a collab with isaac arthur
That would be cool. But he and I operate in very different fields.
What was the sentence that flashed?
When Artivexian uploads
Its a godly day
Thanks, pal. :)
There is a program I think people should use when worldbuilding and that program is SpaceEngine. Currently it is one of the best tools to use to explore not just real life stars, planets and moons but also very accurate procedural objects as well. You can also use it to make your own solar systems and galaxies like I usually do. Should talk about it one of your next videos about worldbuilding.
It's like you never left
Thanks, pal.
I've found that dividing your year in earth days by your number of months (Cell C25/E25, or using the equation =C25/E25) will give you whole numbers for the year in local days and month in local days, although that may just be my setup
Edit: It seems that using an equation like =C25/(E25*X), where X is a fraction with any denominator under a power of two (Like 7/8 or 49/32) seems to work up to a certain point with certain setups, this may need more experimentation
Edit 2: It seems these "perfect denominators" can be found my combining consecutive powers of two (ie 256+128=384 16+32=48
Edit 3: On further inspection, these numbers all seem to be the result of dividing or multiplying 1 by a multiple of 3 (ie 0.333... or 0.166...), still may need further experimentation
I love how the robot is just CGP Grey.
The calendar for my worldbuilding has base 60 for seconds, minutes, and hours, and there are 32 hours in a day, 48 days in a month, and 16 months in a year. Time is recorded in the format of: Century.Year.Month.Day.Hour, such as 05.64.12.08.18 - allowing for highly accurate records of when events occurred. (When a specific number is unknown, it is recorded with two X's in place of the value.
370 days, 30 days in a month. Years come in triplets based on whether the White Moon (full moon) comes on the 1st, 11th or 21st of each month. (each year ends with the ten day Midwinter)
EDIT: it has to be this exact because for story reasons, the Big Thing that happens on 22 Lilymun 672 (November) is exactly 12^5 days after the Big Fantasy Historic Prologue Battle on 10 Miramun 0 (May)
Hes finnaly back
Yup!
WHY DID I NOT SEE THIS IN MY FEED?!
Thanks Artifexian i was able to make a calender with a leap month every 2 years. The year is 324 local days and the month of 24 local days.
Could you do an entry on creating multisolar/multilunar calendars? It would be interesting to see options for calendars tracking any number of objects, perhaps breaking away from the constriction of the uses of even the terms "month" and "year".
I probably won't do a video on this because the info in these videos can be applied to multiple star/moons systems. And also it would be kinda boring.
Think about it, in a close binary star system - the stars will be so close together such that it wouldn't make any sense to track both. People would think of them as a single star for the purposes of calendar building.
In a distant binary pair the stars will be so far away that tracking the distant companion would be like tracking background stars - not very meaningful imo.
In both cases, I'd imagine cultures would develop calendars similar to ours.
In the case of multiple moons, I gave you guys the basic info in the last video - you should be able to extrapolate from there. And if you do please comment and let me know what you came up with. Always super eager to hear about peoples creations.
@@Artifexian Hello Edgar. I know this is a bit of an old comment, but I actually did build something similar for a worldbuilding project. A bit of background: the setting is essentially a frontier colony which has devolved to a WH40K esque neo-feudal state. The homeworld for the main faction, Tahresh, is in a really weird situation. It is the outermost major moon of a brown dwarf, orbiting over Half an AU away from it. It also has two major moons orbiting it real close, with an orbital period of 7 and 33 days each. Tahresh orbits around the Brown Dwarf every 637 days. Now this brown dwarf itself orbits a young, extremely massive O1 type star which is around 160 Solar Masses, completing an orbit every 2146647.6 Earth days.
The calendar of the empire tracks both the Brown Dwarf and the moons. There is a Lunar cycle with weeks tracked by the phases of the inner moon and the months by those of the outer moon. There are 11 months of 33 days and 1 intercalary day to ensure that every year begins when both moons are at the peak of their brightness. Similarly, the solar cycle begins when both suns (Brown dwarf and O type) are at their closest apparent position in the sky. A year has 4 solar cycles and 7 lunar cycles. Every 3 years, another intercalary day is added to the year, and every 63 solar cycles, a day is omitted from the solar cycle to keep the calendar in line.
Most of the orbital data for this was calculated via the Worldsmith. Thank you so much for that.
I wonder if civilizations would rather evolve into a 17 month year with two sets of seasons instead of alternating between years of 8 and 9 months.
Possibly.
dude. you are a fucking genius. i discovered your channel today and i totally LOVE it!
This is very interesting. In my conworld, though, I guess most civilizations won't keep track of the moon in their calendars, because it's so small and dark (due to great distance and low albedo) it's barely visible.
This video made me so happy!! I’m a jewish high fantasy author & my main culture is heavily based on jewish culture & jewish holidays so i desperately needed this!
"Tirteent Mont" those are the two best words I have ever heard lol
You should also make a world map for your planet
Some day.
7:20, have the lengths of the weeks alternate,
and a good mnemonic would be to call particular ones 'even or odd' (binary?)
to know which one you're in by the date
Have you finished the Star System and Planetary building level of Worldbuilding now?
I think so.
oh cool
now lunisolar eclipses
Very topical.
One thing to keep in mind is seconds are scientific.
Under 1 atm, it takes 1ml (weighing 1 gram) of water to heat up 1 degree celsius by applying 1 calorie in 1 second.
This 1ml of water also has the dimensions of 1cm x 1cm x 1cm.
If you're planet has similar laws of physics and your people's culture makes them want a scientific measuring system, you should work up from seconds, not down from hours per day.
Evil Paragon 2 well science didn’t create the seconds, calories aren’t real units and neither are atmospheres, both are just consonant times a SI unit, so changing the constants fixes everything
You should refer Saka or Vikram Samvant Calender from India. It is based on various of factors and compensating to seasons, orbits, etc.
My one true base is base 16 and 8 because powers of two for the win!!
Also, since a circle is divided into 360 degrees and is closely linked to the year, how do you divide a circle?
Probably into 12. I dunno haven't really thought about it.
I agree with Artifexian about 12, though I will admit that 16 and 8's relationship with the power of two is cool. XD
Sadly I divide by 3 more often than I need the square root of something. DX
Also just use radians for dividing a circle. 2 radians make a whole rotation so even base 2 can reproduce radians (relatively) easily (compared to 360 degrees).
Just in case someone else doesn't know what a radian is, it is the radius of the circle multiplied by pi, which also gives half of the circles circumference.
Still on team 84. Despite being a large base, we could encode it in smaller bases like dozenal. It also eases calculations with sevenths.
@@CompactStar A good strategy to push base 84 would be to make a type of currency that is 1/84 of the basic unit. Things like this have happened before, for example the words "penny" and "pence" used to refer to 1/240 of a pound until they were changed to 1/100.
08:12 i spend so much time figuring out what you wrote there :)
My planet needs ring calendars…
You should make a video about shaping the world's landscape
First NativLang and now you :D What a coincidence!
What did NativLang do?
He uploaded a video about language evolution like 3 days ago :) I know your video was about a lunisolar calendar, but I remember that I found you both on the same day looking up some language videos so in my head there is that weird connection between you two. Both channels are really interesting and bring me joy whenever there is a new video out and it's just a fun coincidence that you both uploaded cool videos just a few days apart :)
Sees lunisolar calendar vid
SMASHES PHONE SCREEN
Also LMAO with the elevator music whilst you are fixing the numbers in the charts
Haha! There's been a few people smashing their phones over this video. Good to see the love of lunisolar calendars is a thing.
I don't think that's the whole reason, probably just the love of world building that causes phone genocide ;)
Really wish I'd seen this before building my Pathfinder world. I actually have a 360-day year with 10 months and 9-day weeks.
I loved your channel! More conlanging pleaaaase!! Nerdy high five from Chile!
Duodecimal FTW!
I mean I like the term dozenal more, but they're the same thing.
I'm not sure what kind of calendar the clans in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series use.
On the one hand, the use of the term "moons" suggests a lunar aspect, and there are special days like midsummer or midwinter, which are connected to day length and that suggests a solar aspect. Michelle Paver's website lists the moons and the equivalent months, and apparently there are only twelve. Also, the names of the months typically come from a plant or animal associated with that food source - like the Cloudberry Moon, the Moon of the Roaring Stags, or the Moon of the Salmon Run. There is also the Moon of No Dark, which is when Midsummer happens.
Anyway, what do you think it could be?
Also, if you're not familiar with those books, they're a fantasy series set in hunter-gatherer times and written by Michelle Paver - and personally, I consider them to be a prime example of how to worldbuild. There are a lot of references in the books to the clans' mythology, culture and belief systems, but Paver's careful to strike the balance between enough detail to show off her worldbuilding and not so much detail that it drags the story down. Plus, she often explains her research and real-life counterparts to, say, the taboo against mixing the Forest with the Sea, in the author's notes. They were one of the earliest book series I read - and the best, in my opinion - and I think you'd enjoy them.
I like this one because I enjoy calculating all the leap years and leap months and leap everything.
Now I know how Pope Gregory felt.
Edit: Now that I think about it, he didn't have Google Sheets, so he had to do all the calculations by hand
I have way more respect for him now.