mirandashell
Banned
Calendar for a fantasy world with no seasons
- Thread starter Rose La Vell
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Yup. The concept of zero was a nontrivial mathematical discovery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)
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I have. I realize that.
But envision a civilization that never includes the concept; the impact that has not only on reckoning but philosophically.
To have no concept of Nothing.
Oh crap. Now I'm going to have to play around with that.
mirandashell
Banned
I must be misunderstanding you. As far as I know, that would be the Romans or the Ancient Greeks.... The Mesapotamians.......
I've contemplated this situation for a long time and here's what I came up with:
Time and space. We tend to conflate them.
For example, I would not say it is X miles from here to New York. I would say it is an "X hour drive." That's using time to describe space. We also often talk about a "Five minute walk" or "Two hours on the train."
A people that had no external way to measure time might well do the reverse - use space to describe time. Linguistically, to us, this would feel really awkward. "I'm going to have dinner in two miles" only makes sense if you're hiking. But that's one approach for time-keeping on a tidally-locked world.
Time and space. We tend to conflate them.
For example, I would not say it is X miles from here to New York. I would say it is an "X hour drive." That's using time to describe space. We also often talk about a "Five minute walk" or "Two hours on the train."
A people that had no external way to measure time might well do the reverse - use space to describe time. Linguistically, to us, this would feel really awkward. "I'm going to have dinner in two miles" only makes sense if you're hiking
. But that's one approach for time-keeping on a tidally-locked world.
My seasonless world invented the main calendar they use for historical record-keeping. The society who invented the calendar are obsessive record-keepers, and this obviously requires a calendar. They built the calendar around increments of their sacred number and it has no relation to the planet's orbital period or anything else astrological. It's been adopted by most of the world as the calendar of international trade because it's so simple and unvariable.
But they still had the base unit of a day to build around (in fact, since the world doesn't tilt, days are the same length almost everywhere). I'm not sure what a tidally-locked world would use in the place of a day.
I find this question kind of impossible to answer unless the OP comes back and explains whether their sun rises and sets or not.
Oh, and gravity has nothing to do with rotation. A tidally-locked world will have gravity based on its mass the same as any other large body. I've seen a lot of speculation on what a habitable tidally-locked world's weather would be like, suggesting everything from only the twilight/dawn areas being habitable to the idea that the right kind of atmosphere would conduct heat and cold around the world, moderating it all (but possibly causing constant very high winds).
Of course, the OP's world may not have a scientific basis (like Discworld). Which would make all the speculation pointless, lol.
But they still had the base unit of a day to build around (in fact, since the world doesn't tilt, days are the same length almost everywhere). I'm not sure what a tidally-locked world would use in the place of a day.
I find this question kind of impossible to answer unless the OP comes back and explains whether their sun rises and sets or not.
Oh, and gravity has nothing to do with rotation. A tidally-locked world will have gravity based on its mass the same as any other large body. I've seen a lot of speculation on what a habitable tidally-locked world's weather would be like, suggesting everything from only the twilight/dawn areas being habitable to the idea that the right kind of atmosphere would conduct heat and cold around the world, moderating it all (but possibly causing constant very high winds).
Of course, the OP's world may not have a scientific basis (like Discworld). Which would make all the speculation pointless, lol.
That would be very, very alien and a challenge to write, though it would be interesting to try. Maybe such could evolve on a world where there was such abundance during the species' formative time, nothing ever ran out?
I don't think the Ancient Romans (and other cultures with numeric systems lacking a zero) lacked the concept of nothing (nihilo). I think when zero finally came along, it represented something people already grasped in the abstract and made it an actual concrete quantity. Without a zero to serve as a place holder, older numeric system (aka Roman numerals) made it very hard to do higher math. But they certainly knew what it meant to run out of something or for the coffers to be empty of money.
mirandashell
Banned
The calendar would likely be based off local events. Like, when the harvest was about to be ready, or when the pregnant animals were about to have their calves.
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Ages ago I started a short story around a similar concept.
An order of priests had been keeping a verbal count for a few thousand years. So long that they'd forgotten why they were counting.
Sadly, the only copy of that burned in my house fire and I'll have to eventually work on recreating it.
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Fascinating discussion and I do hope the OP comes back.
I've always been a junkie for the concept of time-keeping, clocks and calenders. Which is odd when you consider that I rarely know what day of the month or even day of the week I'm on IRL, since it's been more than a decade since I worked a job that kept regular hours. (My jobs keep highly irregular hours.) I usually know what day it is only because, "Defiance is tonight, right honey?"
In my D&D days I kept elaborate calendars with holy days, astrological observances etc, a good portion of which my players never actually got to see. LOL
In my Assassin's Flower world, the MC's society lives on a planet where the a day is approximately one of our years long. So for instance the present story is set during the Month of Sunsets. My society has "turnings" (a year/day) and "wakings" based on the concept that it's more efficient and socially useful to run a city with everyone awake at the same time.
Way back in handwavium past, the sorceress Zarta Time-giver created magickal winds that worked (inadvertently I think) as a timing device, separating the waking into hours denoted by a changing of the wind's force and directionality. Several times a waking, the wind blows up, the windchimes tinkle and the priests of Zarta chant particular prayers.
During "daytime" months, the city lives outside and above ground. In "night" months they move into a series of caverns that keep the temperature better regulated since the temperatures above are too chill.
Eventually I'd like to go back and write the story of how/why Zarta harnessed the winds and what she was really trying to do, but at the moment, I'm clueless on that.
I've always been a junkie for the concept of time-keeping, clocks and calenders. Which is odd when you consider that I rarely know what day of the month or even day of the week I'm on IRL, since it's been more than a decade since I worked a job that kept regular hours. (My jobs keep highly irregular hours.) I usually know what day it is only because, "Defiance is tonight, right honey?"
In my D&D days I kept elaborate calendars with holy days, astrological observances etc, a good portion of which my players never actually got to see. LOL
In my Assassin's Flower world, the MC's society lives on a planet where the a day is approximately one of our years long. So for instance the present story is set during the Month of Sunsets. My society has "turnings" (a year/day) and "wakings" based on the concept that it's more efficient and socially useful to run a city with everyone awake at the same time.
Way back in handwavium past, the sorceress Zarta Time-giver created magickal winds that worked (inadvertently I think) as a timing device, separating the waking into hours denoted by a changing of the wind's force and directionality. Several times a waking, the wind blows up, the windchimes tinkle and the priests of Zarta chant particular prayers.
During "daytime" months, the city lives outside and above ground. In "night" months they move into a series of caverns that keep the temperature better regulated since the temperatures above are too chill.
Eventually I'd like to go back and write the story of how/why Zarta harnessed the winds and what she was really trying to do, but at the moment, I'm clueless on that.
Interesting concept. If the sun remained fixed, time could be based on a subjective level. A day could be until the next shave is needed or a week could be determined by fingernail growth.
Every human society needs some form of time-keeping, even on a tidally locked planet. Without mutually agreed-upon units of time, it would be impossible to cooperate in any kind of group project.
"Hey, let's build a castle."
"Sure. When should I get the gang together?"
"'When'? What is this 'when' you speak of?"
Of course, without day cycles, month cycles or year cycles, units could be any arbitrarily easy measurement: 100 heartbeats, the time it takes to walk a single mile, the life span of a single famous individual...
"Hey, let's build a castle."
"Sure. When should I get the gang together?"
"'When'? What is this 'when' you speak of?"
Of course, without day cycles, month cycles or year cycles, units could be any arbitrarily easy measurement: 100 heartbeats, the time it takes to walk a single mile, the life span of a single famous individual...
One of the more natural units of time I can think of would be the growth of certain plants. A year might be how long it takes a certain crop to come to harvest.
The other would be circadian rhythm. A day would be however long the average person stays awake before going to asleep again.
The other would be circadian rhythm. A day would be however long the average person stays awake before going to asleep again.
Just write the damn book. Sharing your ideas with others is just veiled procrastination and will make it a worse read. Writing is the magic of capturing the idea the moment it leaves your head. If you spend too long talking about it you dilute your actual story.
Lotlof has the right idea with stars being used to measure the year. You have your answer. Now git to it.
Lotlof has the right idea with stars being used to measure the year. You have your answer. Now git to it.
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This is an old thread - the last activity was five months ago. The OP's question now seems to have moved to another thread called "what do you think of my premise"
Yeah, should have checked the date. I got here via her other thread. That 5 month gap pretty much reinforces my point though.
Do you mean the planet is tidally locked to its sun?
If so, the concept of a day would be foreign to the beings who inhabit this world--unless they've come from another planet. Then some of the old words and concepts might persist for some time. It also might be hard to adapt to this kind of world, as it would really mess with our sleep cycles.
Some thoughts: Might the species still have some sort of analog to a circadian rhythm (though it wouldn't be circadian, obviously). Selection might still favor some kind of coordination of feeding and sleeping activity, for instance. So maybe sleeps and/or meals would become their unit of time. Maybe they'd eventually calibrate time keeping devices (like water or mechanical clocks--obviously sundials would be useless) to the average time span of their innate activity cycles.
On a larger scale, things like lifespans, average time until maturity etc. would possibly drive their calendar.
[Edit] Ha! Should have read the rest of the thread and gotten those deja vu vibes. I tend to go off the "which threads are bold faced on the first page of my list" when deciding which ones to read/reply to. I have trouble keeping track, since topics often repeat themselves. How do people find these old threads to dig up and resurrect? I have trouble even tracking down old threads I started months ago.
It does--too much planning can become procrastination.
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