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Volume 42, Number 1 January 1971 Field Museum of Natural History fv\fk''-f';.J-'^^-.*% « JA'<* !f^^ BULLETIN Volume 42, Number 1 January 1971 2 The Primitive Basis of Our Calendar Van L. Johnson a study of the Roman calendar explains why our present calendar Is In Its current form 8 Tapa Cloth W. Peyton Fawcett a generous gift of a catalogue of tapa cloth specimens is described 1 Space Biology and the Murchison IMeteorite Dr. Edward J. Olsen a recent discovery of amino acids in meteorites is discussed 1 2 Portrait of a Naturalist-Explorer Joyce Zibro Dr. Emmet R. Blake, curator of birds, is profiled 17 New Books 18 Letters 19 Field Briefs Calendar Cover: reproduction of a specimen of tapa cloth) from A Catalogue of the Difterent Specimens of Clotti Collected in the Three of \ Voyages Captain Cook, to the Southern \ Hemisphere. Field Museum of Natural History Director, E. Leiand Webber Editor Joyce Zibro: Associate Editor Victoria Haider: Staff Writer Madge Jacobs; Production Russ Becker: Photograptiy John Bayalis, Fred Huysmans. The Bulletin is published monthly by Field Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive. Chicago, Illinois, 60605. Subscrip- tions: $9 a year: $3 a year for sctiools. Members of the Museum subscribe througti Museum membership. Opinions expressed by authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policy of Field Museum. Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome. Printed by Field Museum Press. Application to mail at Second-class postage rates is pending at Chicago, Illinois. Postmaster: Please send form 3579 to Field Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605. Bulletin January 1971 The Primitive Basis of Our Calendar Van L Johnson Bulletin January 1971 Why does the year begin on January or Roman weekday system first led me cycle—a term which means that the first? Why are there twelve months in to assume the existence in primitive cycle is completed and begins again a year and why is the twelfth month times of this four-month year. Yet its every time the two intervals in question December when its very name means existence can be detected quite simply coincide: this would have been on "tenth month"? Why does a week have in our present names for the months: March first in the four-month year under seven days, a day twenty-four hours, December, our twelfth month, really discussion. However, the focal point in an hour sixty minutes? A study of the means "the tenth month," and this each month was not the Kalends as Roman calendar can lead to answers to count goes back in an orderly way to the first day, but the Ides or "Divider" questions like these and uncovers September, our ninth month, which which always came sixteen days before the primitive basis of our calendar, an really means the "seventh month." We the end of the month, because half of institution that has become a silent know too that August and July, our thirty on the duodecimal system used dictator of our life's pace in so-called eighth and seventh months, were by the Romans in computing fractions is civilized times. originally the "sixth" and "fifth" months not fifteen, but sixteen. (Sextilis and Quintilis) renamed in still the calendar The Ides of March was We are using Roman honor of Augustus and Julius Caesar in particularly after the first except for minor changes made their own lifetime. All this implies that prominent because March was Caesar's reform in 45 B.C. This is rather month. In a month it must the year once began with March, that thirty-day the have fallen on the fourteenth of the remarkable considering revolutionary January and February were added at day changes made in the calendar up to some time to a ten-month calendar, and month and on the sixth day of a Roman Caesar's time. A of the week. The Ides was study origins that there was an original cluster of eight-day of our calendar faces the obstacle that celebrated as New Year's with four named months—March, April, May Day the Roman calendar was not published and June—to which six numbered great festivities for Anna Perenna, the until 304 B.C. and the oldest extant months were added to form the "Unending Year-Cycle." Festivals like that of Antium, back this were known as feriae, so that the calendar, goes only ten-month year. to sometime in the early first century Ides of March is a ferial day or, as of four B.C. However, evidence for the primitive It appears that this cluster abbreviated in Latin, an F-day. The Ides was an calendar does exist, for the Roman named months actually original was also, I think, a nundinal or three four-month calendar was basically a list of festivals, four-month year. Since market-day, for the great fair in honor one anniversaries and annotations which years would just about complete of Feronia, the market deity, would the best included matter of great antiquity. solar year this was probably have fallen on this day in a four-month Also, the Romans, great conservatives calendar the Romans possessed and year. Moreover, all other market days until Caesar's reform of the especially in their religious concerns, used were reckoned progressively from this in B.C. For most often preserved what they no longer calendar 45 primitive date, so that all fell on the sixth day of a the understood and primitive elements peoples, the sun measures only Roman week and the earliest calendar and the with its distinctive persisted—thanks to this conservatism day; moon, was probably simply a list of these is the first of — in most of the great festivals still phases measurement nundinae. They were also festival or celebrated in Imperial times. Through a periods beyond that. In addition, ferial days for the first recognized often market study of these obsolete factors primitive people designate divinities, so that these days were when to preserved in the written calendars and days (the days they gathered labeled F. Other days of the week, if with intervals the later festivals, we are able to exchange goods) regular they had to be identified, were simply seem reconstruct the earlier history of the between them. The early Romans referred to by the remaining letters of calendar and to form some notion about to have followed this pattern and a the alphabet from A-H. what lies hidden in the prehistoric four-month year may be their attempt as to darkness from which the calendar to combine a thirty-day lunation with an Days of the month, opposed Their market of the week, were numbered, I emerged. eight-day market-week. days days were called nundinae or "ninth believe, by counting up to and down In research of this kind, complete days," but this means "eight days" by from the Ides: two vestiges of this is but I certainty usually impossible, our mode of reckoning which is not practice survive in the name "Nones" believe that I have found a clue major inclusive like the Roman. The meshing for the ninth, i.e., the eighth day before to the solution of of many perplexing of these two time-units—thirty and the Ides, and in the name a festival, an unrecorded to problems: namely, eight—could be soonest accomplished the Quinquatrus which seems mean four-month A of the nundinal fifth of year. study in four months of thirty days each, i.e., the day after the Ides March. a year or cycle—that is what the Latin This practice was abandoned in later This is a Iragment ot the calendar of word for year, annus, seems to calendars when the Nones and the Praeneste lor the beginning ot Inarch. mean—of 120 days. This is what Kalends became reference points in Fragments ol this calendar have been call with the Ides. coming to light since the litteenth century. anthropologists a permutation counting, along Bulletin January 1971 3 Calendar The primitive calendar was a permanent of Mars in the festivals of this primitive This new year of ten lunations, or 300 calendar, of course—something which March; and June, if named for Juno by days, corresponding roughly to the calendar reformers are again striving Latin peoples, would have been called gestation period in cattle and in human for—since a new year began Junonius, not Junius. The first of June beings, was augmented by four days automatically whenever the first day of was always known not as the Kalends to give a multiple of eight for the total the week and the first day of the month of June but as Kalendae Fabariae, the number of days in a year, 304, so that coincided. The permanent nature of the "Kalends of the Bean" and here, I the eight-day week would still mesh calendar is nicely illustrated in think, we have a vestige of the earlier with months. These four extra days a phrase which runs through ancient month-name, Fabarius, the month of were added, one each, to the months literature on the subject, the annus the "bean," a staple diet for hogs in — of March, May, July and October which vertens or "turning year." Commentators early Italy. The month we call Marchi continued throughout Roman history to have seen a reference to the turning because the Romans named it Martius have their Ides or full moon reckoned heavens and other celestial matters; later on when the cult of Mars was on the basis of a 31 -day month.