I have been drawn to today's topic through a variety of not necessarily related interests.

First, in my research and teaching I have more reference than most to the extremes of measure of time. On the one hand, archaeologists casually fling about rather large clumps of time. "Were the first migrations across Beringia ten, twenty or thirty thousand years ago?" On the other hand, in my current research I am studying the evidence for urban planning in various pre-Columbian communities in Guatemala and Belize. Acquiring the data means mapping the sites. And while mapping is certainly about space and distance rather than time, in modern mapping methods, distance is most often measured by time, very short intervals of time. Global Positioning System equipment is capable of measuring the interval of time in which a radio wave moving at the speed of light crosses a gap of two millimeters.

Both of those references of time and the development of techniques and equipment are the consequence of a particular set of attitudes about time that is relatively recent, at least in the context of archaeological time.

Second, I tired of reading the phrase, "Western linear view of time," particularly with the unspoken implication that it is somehow an inferior notion. I believe that a linear view of time is neither typically nor exclusively western, and that the notion of "western" when applied to the history of ideas is a category that does more to obscure than it does to clarify,

And third, with an interest both in computers and in religious ideas, I am entertained by the fascination of the media with the millennium bug. A bug which some would have us believe will cause civilization as we know it, or at least credit cards, which may in fact be "civilization as we know it," to end before the real millennium has a chance to do us in

This discussion will lead to an examination of two questions, both of them confidently, consistently and smugly answered by academics of all disciplines, temporal and timeless. While Muhammad said that all Muslims would not agree upon an error, surely it is a certainty that all academics, if they agree, are in error.

The discussion will lead thus to the consideration of the questions, "When does the millennium begin?" And the corollary, "Where does the millenium begin?" I can assure you at the outset that the answer, "January 1, 2001, on the Prime Meridian is either correct because it is true of all times, and therefore trivial, or it is in error.

And besides what could be more fascinating than to consider the simple system we have devised for counting days that carries so much diverse cultural baggage. We are gathered here on Saturn's day, the 28^th of the moon of Mars in the year of our Lord 1998.

The document Developing Standards in United States History for Students in Grades 5-12 includes the following in its introduction.

And

The document also includes the standard for what we all know is most important in the study of history.

That is, dates are important. We knew it all along.

Lewis Mumford remarks that it was the development of the clock that dissociated time from natural rhythms and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences. Current attitudes toward chronology stem from this notion that time is real, is regular in its progress, that it can be measured, and that it is "an organizing approach that fosters appreciation of pattern and causation in history." It has not always been the case.

Time and reality

Plato lived in the last quarter of the 5^th century and first half of the 4^th century BCE. The use of BCE as the era marker is itself a marker that implies a particular attitude no only toward the era, but also of the author. One of my colleagues referred to himself as a traditionalist in commenting on his continuing use of the BC/AD era markers.

For Plato the universe is divided into two classes of things, things that change and things that do not. Members of the first class are called ideas; they are permanent and timeless. Members of the second class are only imitations of members of the first class; they change. Time, since it changes, is a member of the second class, an imperfect image of eternity.

In the Timaeus Plato remarks that the father and creator made the world to be an image of the eternal gods.

If time is not real then history is the study of the unreal, a judgement confirmed by many.

It is also Plato's judgement that the movements of the celestial bodies are the periodic markers of time.

Aristotle typically described the elegant perfection of the cosmos as it ought to be and assumed any difference from observation to be the consequence of our inability to observe correctly. He was perfectly willing to observe nature and describe it. But description was merely confirmation of the truth that he had logically deduced from original principles. His observation that the spherical nature of the earth was demonstrated by the fact that its shadow cast on the moon was always the arc of a circle was simply a demonstration of what he already knew to be true. In this regard he is among the last of the classical philosophers rather than the first of the Hellenistic philosophers. Hellenistic science had been marked by measure and calculation. Two of its most important figures are Archimedes of Syracuse, (d. 212 B.C.) and Eratosthenes of Cyrene, (276-195 B.C).

Aristarchus of Samos, (ca. 310 - 230 BCE) calculated that the sun's mass was 300 times the earth's mass, thereby making a geocentric theory impossible. He thus propounded a heliocentric theory. While his calculation was off by several orders of magnitude, his reasoning was sound. Archimedes, Appolonius, and Hipparchus could not make the observed phenomena agree with the sun as the center of circular orbits and therefore rejected the system. The question of whether the solar system was heliocentric or geocentric was a primary feature of Hellenistic astronomy.

Archimedes calculated limits for the value of pi, invented terminology for expressing numbers of any magnitude, laid the foundations of the calculus of the infinite, began the science of hydrostatics, proved the relation of the volume of a sphere to a circumscribing right cylinder, an engraving of which is on his tomb. He created a planetarium worked by water, invented the compound pulley and windlass, and Archimedes screw, was too absent minded to remember to eat. Discovering the principles of specific gravity in the tub, he jumped out and ran home naked, shouting "Eureka", when difficulties arose in the launching of a large ship, he launched it by himself and said to the king, Hiero, "Give me where to stand and I will move the earth,"

Eratosthenes was nicknamed Beta on the grounds that Archimedes was Alpha. Archimedes book, On Method, was dedicated to Eratosthenes, He became head of the museaon, the famous library at Alexandria, in about 235 BC He is most well known for a calculation of the circumference of the earth based upon the comparison of the angle of the sun at zenith transit on the same day at Alexandria and at Syene. His method was impeccable and his calculation was within about four hundred miles of the current figure.

While Claudius Ptolemy used the results of Hellenistic astronomers and mathematicians in constructing his model of the solar system, the Hellenistic focus on observation and description gave way to a Christian notion of the perfection of creation, a notion that would be reinforced when, in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas contrived a conjunction between the revealed truth of the scripture and the logic of Aristotle.

Claudius Ptolemaeus (ca. 100 - 170 CE) constructed the circular model of the heavens. The earth was its center and the moon, sun, stars and planets revolved around it in perfect circles, each planet traveling at a constant velocity. Unfortunately, increasing precision of observation also produced increasingly complex calculations of epicyclic motion in order to maintain the system. This was problematic since it lost any vestige of the mathematical elegance that would have been expected. In fact the theory of epicycles had to be created to deal with the gap between what was known to be true, that the perfection of the heavens demanded that planets move at a constant velocity through the most perfect of shapes, the circle.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543 CE) solved part of the problem by changing the center of the system to the sun. But Copernicus still maintained that, as he said, "the movement of the celestial bodies is regular, circular and everlasting." Observations of actual planetary motion were sufficiently accurate that astronomers had to use 34 circles to explain the movements of five planets. The geometry of the cosmos was still based on the circle, the most perfect of plane figures. And above all the regularity of the cosmic bodies still defined time.

Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) emphasized that science had to concern itself with the sensible world, not the world of abstract argument. That notion represented a renaissance of Hellenistic ways of thinking. Aristotle had believed that bodies fell at velocities proportional to their weight. Galileo easily demonstrated that this simply was not true. Following years of experimentation in which he slowed down the effects of gravity by rolling objects down an inclined plane, he found the distance the object traveled was proportional to the square of the elapsed time. Galileo later discovered the relationship between velocity and time and between acceleration and time. Galileo, however, was only able to ponder but not to solve the problem of how one determined the instantaneous velocity of an accelerating object. What Galileo had determined by experiment and described by formula that the velocity of falling bodies was constantly changing.

Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630) was not at all modest in his description of his accomplishments. In the dedication of Book 5 of his On the Most Perfect Harmony of Celestial Motion, published in 1619, he writes,

Remember, If you will, the refeence to six thousand years. Kepler's excitement was over his discovery that he could account for the observed planetary motions by using a single elipse for each planet. Along their elliptic paths the planets moved with constantly changing speed. From the Aristotelian cosmos with bodies the regular motion of which defined the passage of time to a universe whose bodies moved along less perfect paths with a constantly changing velocity. Time was no longer defined by the heavens.

Isaac Newton (642 - 1727) in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laid the foundations of modern physics. In it he states that "absolute, true and mathematical time of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration..."

Perfection is not in the heavens, it is in time.

A very different view of time emerged in Israelite and Judaic understandings of the actions of God in time. The Deuteronomic Historian, writing in the sixth century BCE, presents a clear view that the fidelity of the covenant community, often personified in the king, results in consequences that occur in time. It is thus particularly important to understand the actions of God in history. Historiography holds the place expected of theology.

The Deuteronomic Historian places these words in the mouth of Moses just prior to the death of Moses.

The Deuteronomic Historian is writing in the time following the destruction of the southern kingdom, and of Solomon's Temple and the devastation of the city of Jerusalem by Babylon. He is seeking an explanation in history of the disaster that has befallen.

A half century later Deutero-Isaiah is writing after the fall of Babylon and after the edict of Cyrus of Persia permitting the return of the exiles and the rebuilding of the temple. He focuses on the role of God in the activities of Cyrus, a non-believer in bringing salvation from captivity.

Typical of apocalyptic literature, far from being obscure references the people and events described above can be so well identified that this section of Daniel is probably the most precisely dated composition in the Bible. The four kingdoms are those of Babylon, the Medes, the Persians and the Macedonians. The ten horns are the successors to Alexander. He that "shall speak great words against the most High…and think to change times and laws" is Antiochus IV Epiphanes who attempted to introduce Hellenistic worship in the temple in Jerusalem. The author knows of Antiochus' two invasions of Egypt in 169 and 168 BCE. But he foretells Antiochus' death in an attack on Jerusalem. He thus does not know of Antiochus' death in the far eastern regions of his realm in 164 BCE. Thus the text was composed between 168 and 164 BCE. Apocalyptic defines the present as the penultimate and the ultimate as proximate.

Christianity adopted this notion as well and it is a frequent theme in early Christian literature. Paul writes to the Thessalonians.

In Christian thought it is this return of Christ that institutes the millennium.

There is a convergence of interest between the view of time proposed by Newton, an absolute and mathematical entity, and the view of time of those of apocalyptic interest. They each have an interest in precise measurement.

This notion of precision carries over into what we might call the academic view of time. I am speaking now not of the measurement of time but rather of the citation of time. I believe that it is the case that precision in the citation of a date is taken to imply precision in other non-temporal attributes of the event being described. Also, and more importantly, precision in the citation of a date is taken to imply that the research of the author has been impeccable and that the argument is sound. Thus I recommend to you that you always cite dates with the greatest precision possible, particularly when the precision is meaningless and your argument is weak. It will at least distract your critics.

The measure of passing time is accomplished by calendars and by timekeepers. By tradition a day is the smallest unit on a calendar. Measuring shorter intervals of time is called timekeeping.

Calendars are counting tools not measuring tools. They count whole units of a particular kind; days, weeks, months, years. They are a part of the world of integers, not the world of real numbers, and there lies not a small part of the problem.

While there are many worthy calendars that have been used, today I am only going to deal with those that are directly ancestral to our current calendar, with one exception that I will mention at the end.

The Egyptian calendar is the oldest ancestor of our current calendar that we can identify. It was most likely adopted in 2773 BCE. 4,770 years ago. Few institutions have survived with so little change. The Egyptian calendar consisted of four seasons of three months each. Each month had thirty days, divided into three ten day weeks. Twelve thirty-day months accounted for 360 days with five epigomenal days added at the end to bring the total to 365 days. This calendar, known as the civil calendar, was never corrected to bring it into conformity with a solar year. But the only seasonal event of any importance to the Egyptian was the beginning of the annual inundation of the Nile. By coincidence the midsummer heliacal rising of Sirius was the harbinger of the Nile flood. They needed no calendar for that event. It is an event easy to observe on the eastern horizon just before dawn. It requires no instruments, and the time and place to observe are made dramatically clear by the three stars of Orion's belt pointing directly at the point on the horizon.

The calendar date of the rising of Sirius changed by one day every four years. Over a 1,460-year period the Sirius moved a full round through the calendar. It is because the Egyptians occasionally noted the civil calendar date upon which Sirius was first observed rising and because we can reconstruct that event, as you see here, that many dates in Egyptian history can be known with great confidence.

The Egyptians were clearly aware that the civil calendar was only an approximation of a solar year, but typically did not believe that the difference was a problem. The very corrective measure that Julius Caesar would institute had in fact been suggested almost two centuries earlier. Ptolemy III Euergetes (r. 246 - 221) decreed that there would be six rather than five epigomenal days once every four years. The Egyptian priesthood ignored him.

Julian Calendar

The Roman calendar introduced in the sixth century BCE was an approximate lunar calendar of 355 days. Each month began on a new moon. The year began on March 1. Since the calendar was some ten days short of a solar year there was considerable adjustment of the calendar to maintain seasonality. Every other year an additional month of Mercedonius was inserted. However, the need for seasonal adjustment provided the opportunity for adjustment for other reasons as well. Politicians secured the aid of the Pontifex Maximus in adjusting the calendar to shorten or lengthen terms of office. In 153 BCE the beginning of the year was changed to January 1. The new date had no scientific or seasonal significance, but was the appointed time for newly elected consuls to assume their civil duties. The populace considered this event as appropriate for the beginning of a new year so that, first by custom and later by official enactment, January 1 became the new year. The Romans did not, however, change the numbered months and they remain as artifacts in our calendar, September, October, November, December, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth.

Julius Caesar, in his role as Pontifex Maximus, was responsible for regulating the Roman calendar. You may recall that he spent some time in Egypt in the early forties. He appointed Sosigenes of Alexandria to be his advisor in reforming the Roman calendar.

Caesar adopted the Egyptian civil calendar, with two changes. He distributed the last five days of the year, a festival period in Egypt, more evenly throughout the calendar, and he adopted Ptolemy's previously rejected extra leap-year day by adding it to February, the last month in the year, once every four years. The calendar was fixed at 365 days in ordinary years and 366 days in leap years. In recognition of this outstanding reform a grateful Senate honored Julius Caesar by re-naming Quintilis, his birth-month, July.

He put his new calendar into effect in 45 BCE. The preceding year had been one of the biennial periods that included the inserted month of Mercedonius. It became knows as the "Year of Confusion." Caesar took the 355-day year with its inserted Mercedonius of 23 days and then added two more months making it 445 days long, this extreme adjustment was needed since the vernal equinox and its calendar date, March 25 were separated by fifty days. The two added months were Undecember, 33 days, and Duodecember, 34 days.

The new leap-year day was inserted after the 23rd of February, where the 13th month of Mercedonius had been previously intercalated. Thus the 24th of February --in Roman terminology--"the 6th day before the Kalends of March"--was repeated in leap years and became a double-six or bissextilis. This is the origin of the term bisextile given by Europeans to the leap-year day.

Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, a few months after the new calendar came into use.

During the years that followed, the leap-year rule was misunderstood and misapplied by the College of Pontiffs. Instead of inserting an extra day every four years, they observed leap year every three years. This caused the calendar once again to shift from its seasonal moorings, and it was Caesar's nephew and successor, the Augustus, who corrected the error by canceling all leap years between 8 BCE and 8 CE, and directing that thereafter all leap years should fall as originally intended. The senate again honored a reformer of the calendar by renaming Sextilis, a month the emperor considered auspicious, August.

Constantine thought that the Christian pattern of a seven day week, derived from Jewish custom, which devoted the first day to worship was worthy of emulation. And thus in 321 CE he issued an edict introducing the seven-day week into the Julian calendar. The weekdays had no names but were known only by numbers. The week displaced the old Kalends, Nones and Ides, and eventually the days acquired the names of the seven heavenly bodies, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. These assignments follow an old Assyrian seven day calendar, itself probably the basis for the seven day Jewish week.

The bishops meeting at Nicea were well aware that the events of the Christian Holy Week took place in the context of the Jewish Passover celebration. The last supper was believed to be the Passover Seder. Passover, however, was scheduled on the 15^th of Nisan on the calendar that we presently call the Jewish Calendar, which was the calendar used by the Seleucid kingdom, probably a modification of a Babylonian calendar. The Seleucid calendar is a luni-solar calendar. That is it makes use of the nineteen year Metonic cycle. Over nineteen years there will be 235 lunations and the sun and moon will have returned to the relative positions they held nineteen years earlier. This calendar operates with 12 years of 12 lunar months each and 7 years of 13 lunar months each.

The first month of the year is Nisan, the beginning of which is kept within eleven days of the vernal equinox by adding a second twelfth month to years one, four, seven, nine, twelve and fifteen. A second sixth month is added to year eighteen.

In spite of the known coincidence of the first Holy Week with Passover the differences in the two calendars made correlation difficult. Furthermore, the bishops wanted the celebration of Easter always to fall on a Sunday. There are important elements of the story that are tied to the fact that the events are played out in the context of a Jewish week. It is the fact that the crucifixion is on a Friday that explains why Jesus must be removed and buried before sundown. Sundown will mark the beginning of the Sabbath.

Thus the bishops at Nicea, noting that the vernal equinox fell on March 21, decreed that the date of Easter be calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21. Had they incorporated the vernal equinox into the formula, as is commonly stated, rather than the date, March 21, the problem that the next reform was designed to solve would have never arisen.

Through the Middle Ages the use of the Julian calendar evolved and acquired local peculiarities that continue to snare the unwary historian. There were variations in which day was celebrated as New Year's, in the initial epoch for counting years, and in the names given to days. The Germans substituted their gods, Tiw, Woden, Thor and Freya for Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus.

Caesar seems to have intended a further reform by restoring March 1^st as New Year's Day. This is suggested from the fact that the epigomenal days were added always to the end of the year in the Egyptian calendar. Caesar's epigomenal day was February 29^th, the day before March 1^st. However, in the year that he introduced the reform a new moon fell on January 1^st. This was considered auspicious and he postponed that change. There were other conventions though, the most popular being March 1^st, March 25^th, and December 25^th. March 1^st was the original Roman republican New Year's Day. March 25^th is the Festival of the Annunciation of Mary, nine months before December 25^th and is conveniently close to the vernal equinox, a marker that many groups had used.

The method that was used to calculate the dates of Easter used the nineteen-year Metonic cycle as its basis. It was not based upon actual observation. In 532 a monk named Dionysius Exiguus was compiling a table of dates of Easter. An existing table that he was working from covered the nineteen-year period denoted 228-247, where years were counted from the beginning of the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian. Dionysius continued the table for a nineteen-year period, which he then designated Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi 532-550. Thus, Dionysius' Anno Domini 532 is equivalent to Anno Diocletiani 248. It is not known what data, records or traditions Dionysius used to establish the correspondence.

Among those most responsible for the spread of the use of the Christian Epoch in dating is the eighth-century English historian, Bede, who also began the practice of counting years backward from A.D. 1.

Current attention on the millennium often cites Dionysius Exiguus as having erred in not beginning the system with the year zero. In fact Dionysius says nothing at all about the initial year of the system; he merely states the correspondence of the two years 228 and 532 in the two systems. But he is clearly working on the pattern of a regnal epoch and they always begin with the year one. In these epochs we are counting, not measuring, years. It would be irrational to have a year zero. At any rate it is Bede, not Dionysius, who introduces the system for counting BC.

The Gregorian Calendar

Using March 21 as the date of the vernal equinox and the Metonic cycle as the basis for calculating lunar phases, by the thirteenth century it was recognized that the equinox had regressed from March 21 to a date earlier in the month and Easter was slowly becoming a summer holiday and was losing its vague correlation with Passover. Over the next four centuries, scholars debated the correct time for celebrating Easter and the means of regulating this time calendrically. The Church made intermittent attempts to solve the Easter question, without reaching a consensus.

By the sixteenth century the equinox had shifted by ten days and astronomical New Moons were occurring four days before the ecclesiastical New Moons of the Metonic cycle. Pope Gregory XIII, who began his reign in 1572, convened a commission soon thereafter to consider reform of the calendar.

The recommendations of Pope Gregory's calendar commission were instituted by the papal bull "Inter Gravissimus," signed on February 24, 1582. Ten days were deleted from the calendar, so that October 4, 1582 was followed by October 15, 1582, thereby causing the vernal equinox of 1583 and subsequent years to occur about March 21. And a new table of New Moons and Full Moons was introduced for determining the date of Easter.

Years are counted from the initial epoch defined by Dionysius Exiguus, and are divided into two classes: common years and leap years. A common year is 365 days in length; a leap year is 366 days, with an intercalary day, designated February 29, preceeding March 1. Leap years are determined according to the following rule:

Every year that is exactly divisible by 4 is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100. These centurial years are leap years only if they are exactly divisible by 400. As a result the year 2000 is a leap year, whereas 1900 and 1800 were not leap years.

Subject to the logistical problems of communication and governance in the sixteenth century, the new calendar was promulgated through the Roman-Catholic world. Protestant states initially rejected the calendar, but gradually accepted it over the coming centuries. The Eastern Orthodox churches rejected the new calendar and continued to use the Julian calendar with traditional lunar tables for calculating Easter. Because the purpose of the Gregorian calendar was to regulate the cycle of Christian holidays, its acceptance in the non-Christian world was initially not at issue. But as international communications developed, the civil rules of the Gregorian calendar were gradually adopted around the world.

The legal code of the United States does not specify an official national calendar. Use of the Gregorian calendar in the United States stems from an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1751, which specified use of the Gregorian calendar in England and its colonies.

In 1918 the Soviet Union adopted the Gregorian calendar with the result that the anniversary of the October revolution is celebrated on November 7.

Early Christianity expected the immanent return of Christ. As the years crept by with no apparent return many began to seek a specific timetable. In response this issue the writer of 2 Peter in the middle of the second century writes:

The author here recalling the Psalmist, "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4)

In the early fourth century the church father Lactantius wrote

The argument was presented again at the end of the seventeenth century by Thomas Burnet in his human and geological history, The Sacred Theory of the Earth.

The theory of the millennial week held that each thousand-year day would have begun with an event of great importance and surely thus the most important event of all, the birth of God's son, would have occurred at the beginning of one of those boundaries. If we know which one we will known when the sixth millennial day will end.

The year 1000 ended with no more calamities than were to be expected. So it wasn't that year.

James Ussher was Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He was noted in his day as a scholar and he set for himself the task of computing the date of creation.

Ussher placed creation as four thousand years before the birth of Jesus. That would mean that two thousandth anniversary of the birth would consummate the age of the earth and mark the beginning of the millennium. Let me ease, however, any anxiety that that knowledge might provoke. The Gospel of Matthew makes it clear that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Ussher knew that Herod had died in 4 BCE and thus that Dionysius Exiguus had erred slightly in his fixing of the correlation of the Diocletian and Christian Eras. Ussher fixed the date of creation as Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE. Ussher had meant to fix the date as the Sunday closest to the autumnal equinox. In fact it was the autumnal equinox.

So now we have arrived at one correct answer to the question, "When does the millennium begin?" With a remarkable sense of mathematical beauty the six thousandth anniversary of that first equinox was attained on Sunday, September 21, 1997. The millennium was ushered in by the Anaheim Angels completing a three-game sweep over the Texas Rangers.

The real disappointment is that we know that the question "When does the millennium begin?" is really just a proxy for "When does the party begin?"

Well, if we missed Bishop Ussher's party last fall, perhaps we could find some other anniversary. The problem is that to ask the question "When does the millennium begin?" is really meaningful only with respect to the Christian millennium.

A second meaning of 'millennium' is any thousand-year period. That won't help because that kind of millennium is always beginning.

Finally, a millennium is the thousandth anniversary of some event.

We could consider celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the celebration of the end of the first millennium. This would seem to be the most common understanding of the forthcoming event and would be the meaning that gives rise to the question of which year marks the end of the millennium.

It was the year 1,000, not the year 999, that was understood throughout Europe to be the last year of the first millennium. However, relatively few people would have celebrated January 1, 1001 as New Year's day. Italy and much of what had been Roman Europe used the old Roman Republican New Year's day of March 1. The British Isles used the Festival of the Annunciation of the Virgin, March 25, as New Year's Day and not a few places started the New Year with December 25.

The calendar in use, of course, was the Julian calendar. If we convert to the corresponding Gregorian dates we can cover most of the anniversaries by celebrating New Year's eve parties in the year 2001 on January 6, March 6, March 31 and December 31.

January 1, 2001 will be the one thousandth anniversary of the celebration of New Year's Day in the year 1000 for those who celebrated Christmas Day as New Year's.

The British confidently boast that the millennium starts at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich. In one rather narrow sense this is true

In October 1884 at the behest of the President of the United States of America 41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, DC, USA for the International Meridian Conference.

It was desirable to adopt a single world meridian to replace the numerous one's already in existence.

(Slide Prime Meridian) The Meridian passing through the principal Transit Instrument at the Observatory at Greenwich was to be the 'initial meridian'.

That all longitude would be calculated both east and west from this meridian up to 180°.

All countries would adopt a universal day. The universal day would be a Mean Solar Day, beginning at the Mean Midnight at Greenwich and counted on a 24-hour clock.

It is this universal day that begins at the Prime Meridian. However, the universal day is hardly the day that most of us use. Ordinary days begin at midnight in the local time zone with the change of day and date first occurring at the International Date Line. The International Date Line is the 180^th meridian with some deviations to avoid dividing land areas and to insure certain island groups to have the same day. It’s the meridian that zigs.

Getting ready for the next big one

Having lost the opportunity to celebrate the 6,000^th anniversary of Ussher's date of creation, we should take care to prepare for the next time ending event.

The peoples of Mesoamerica developed a calendar based upon counting days. They viewed time in a series of cycles.

The Tzolkin is a cycle of 260 days which designates individual days by one cycle of thirteen day numbers and one of twenty day names. On each succeeding day both the day number and the day name are advanced. Thus succeeding days would be designated 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal, 4 Kan, and so on. The same pair of designators will not recur in a period of 260 days.

The Haab is sometimes called the Vague Year since it is 365 days long and is thus about a quarter of a day short of a solar year.

The Haab is a cycle of 365 days divided into eighteen months of twenty days each and a final month of five days. The days of each month are numbered from 1 to 19, and of the final month from 1 to 4. The final day of the month is called either the ‘end of’ the month or the ‘seating of’ the following month.

From the beginning of the year succeeding days would be designated 1 Pop, 2 Pop, 3 Pop,…,18 Pop, 19 Pop, End of Pop (or Seating of Uo), 1 Uo, 2 Uo 3 Uo.

The Tzolkin and the Haab are independent of each other but run simultaneously and days were typically recorded in both systems, such as 4 Ahau 8 Cumku. This combination does not recur for 18,980 days or 52 years. This longer designation is called the Calendar Round.

The Long Count is based on a 360-day year composed of 18 divisions of twenty days each.

The year is called a tun, a word derived from the word for ‘stone.’ The years are born as burdens on the backs of a succession of gods.

1 day is a kin, ‘sun’

20 kinob, 20 days, are a uinal

18 uinalob, 360 days, are a tun, ‘stone’

20 tunob, 7,200 days, roughly 20 years, are a katun,

20 katunob, 144,000 days, are a baktun,

The baktun are counted in a series of thirteen, Thirteen baktunob are 13 x 144,000 days = 1,872,000 days or 5125 years and 3 months of our calendar)

The Long count thus designates each day uniquely in a period of over five thousand years.

The earliest long count stelae are found in southern Mexico and the south coast of Guatemala with dates that correlate to the second century BCE. This system was in use through the period of the conquest and can be firmly correlated with our calendar. Since the long count makes no effort to synchronize with any events and merely marks time by counting days, it is a calendar of great precision and accuracy. It is typically the case that events in the first millennium CE in Mesoamerica can be dated with far greater accuracy and confidence than can events in the corresponding period in Europe.

A thirteen baktun period will end on December 23, 2012. Since this is an anniversary of an event that last occurred 5125 years ago we should prepare a worthy party.