Calendar Factory Fired Me For Taking a Day Off Quiz

Answer: Latin for "the first day of the month"

The word "calendar", in English, comes from the Latin word "kalendae," which was the first day of the month. It comes from the Latin verb "calare", meaning "to call out", and in the Roman system, on the first day of the month the pontiffs would officially announce or "call out" that debts were due. The word "calendarium", its literal meaning being an account book or a ledger, was also derived from calendae.

Answer: New moon to new moon

First discovered in 1976 from aerial surveys, the Warren Field calendar site in Aberdeenshire, Scotland (near Crathes Castle) is a series of 12 pits arranged in a slight arc, that radiocarbon dating estimates were made around 8,000-10,000 B.C. in the Early Mesolithic period. The pits are smaller at the ends and get bigger as they progress toward the middle. The 12 pits tracked each lunar month from new moon to new moon which is 29.53 days, but that means 12 lunar months will fall short of a solar year by about 11 days.

However, archeologists noticed that the pits were positioned so that the calendar would reset each year to account for this 11-day misalignment. They noticed that the midwinter solstice sunrise (December 20-22) occurs in a conspicuous notch on the horizon created by the Slug Road Pass through the hills to the southeast of the Warren Field pits. It provided a fixed point where an annual solar event can be observed, effectively resetting the calendar to start counting off the lunar months again until the next midwinter solstice, when you start counting again. Archeologists feel that the slight misalignment of the sixth pit might have been the point of observation towards the midwinter solstice.

Answer: Sirius

The first day of the Egyptian calendar's year was when the sky's brightest star Sirius, the Dog Star, which they identified with the goddess Isis, rose with the Sun. Coincidentally, the length of time it takes for the two risings is 365.242199 days, and so the Egyptian year was calculated to be 365 days long. Each month was 30 days, with an extra 5 added to make up the difference; those 5 days were festival days, linked to the birthdays of the gods Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.

Answer: True

The Egyptians were excellent astronomers and were fully aware of the ensuing phenomenon of ignoring a leap year leading to each new year eventually cycling through an entire solar year over the centuries. This period of time is called the Sothic Cycle, and to be precise, it took about 1,461 Egyptian years for the calendar to complete a full cycle and realign with the seasons. To look at this phenomenon from our modern view, it would be just like our July month gradually becoming a winter month halfway through the cycle until things eventually realigned with the seasons and July returned to being a summer month.

Answer: Chores

The Sumerian calendar measured agricultural cycles and government terms so that they'd know when to perform chores such as harvesting, planting, and administrative tasks. Sumerian months had practical names like:
ITI SE-KIN-KU was the "Month of barley harvest".
ITI DU-KŪ "Month of the opening of the granaries".
ITI APIN-DU-A was the "Month when the seed plow is opened".
ITI NE-NE-GAR was the "Month of threshing"
And so on.

Answer: The Sumerian Calendar

The Sumerian Calendar was one of civilization's earliest attempts to reconcile the lunar month (~29.5 days) with the solar year (~365.25 days), which then became the de rigueur model for most calendars that followed.
The calendar's structure was formalized by the Sumerian city-states (like Ur and Uruk) over 5,000 years ago. Each month started with the first crescent moon after the new moon, and was divided into two halves, probably for administrative and labor purposes. They did not use a 7-day week. To compensate for the 11-day drift difference between 12 lunar months and one solar year, they would occasionally add a 13th month.
The calendar's primary purpose was to regulate planting, harvesting, and the scheduling of religious festivals and tax collection. It was the engine of the world's first complex urban societies.
The Babylonian Calendar was a direct successor of the Sumerian Calendar, which made some refinements to it. The Alexandrian calendar, finalized in the Hellenistic period in the 1st century B.C, used the solar model from the Egyptians and the mathematical precision and the lunar/solar correction principle (called intercalation) developed by the Babylonians. The "Alexandrian" version (with proper leap-day alignment) was officially implemented under Augustus about 30-25 B.C.

Answer: Metonic Cycle

While many civilizations relied on observation when devising their calendars, the Babylonian innovation in the late 5th century B.C., was the Metonic Cycle. Since 19 solar years are almost exactly equal to 235 lunar months, they realized that by adding 7 extra months over the course of 19 years, would realign calendars much more precisely.
The Athenian astronomer Meton proposed the 19-year cycle for the Greek lunar calendar, which is how the cycle got its current name.

The Saros Cycle is used to predict solar and lunar eclipses; after one Saros (18 years), the Sun-Earth-Moon geometric relationship repeats.
The Circadian Cycle of 24 hours is our biological clock regulating sleep and metabolism.
Iteration Cycles are feedback loops (doing something, and after looking at the result, using the result to do the next step) in dynamical systems (anything that changes over time according to its rules) and chaos theory.

Answer: cat, fox, bear, lion

The animals in the Chinese zodiac were mostly those associated with daily life and agriculture. Cats were not yet common in early ancient China, but perhaps the cat's exclusion is based on the Great Race folk tale in which the Cat and the Rat had been friends until The Jade Emperor declared the order of the zodiac animals would be determined by the order in which each arrived at his party. The Rat knew that the Cat was faster, and so the Rat promised to wake the Cat for the race - but it didn't - so the Cat overslept and missed the race.
Another myth tells of the Fox being a strong contender, but because of its arrogance the other animals conspired to have the Fox disqualified, and the Rabbit (or Hare) took its place.
Some folktales mention the Bear as a candidate, but since it didn't become a part of domestic and agricultural life in the early Chinese civilization, it didn't make the cut.
Although the Lion symbolizes power in Chinese culture, with lion statues guarding temples and such, they are not native to China (unlike the Tiger which is).

Answer: body of a bull and the head of a lion

Emerging from its hiding place once a year the ferocious Nian terrorized humans, although in its earliest incarnations it wasn't so specifically described as bull-bodied and lion-headed, but was simply a wild beast. Over time though, it came to be depicted by those two animals, a combination of bull's raw strength with the lion's regal ferocity.

Maybe not so ferocious though, as the Nian is staved off by explosions, and fire and the color red, which is why traditional Chinese New Year celebrations today feature fireworks, loud clanging, and brilliant red costumes.

Answer: The "Hùnluàn Calendar" with months consisting of fixed 30 to 31 days.

Hùnluàn is a Chinese word meaning general chaos and disorder, and while the Gregorian calendar has fixed month lengths of 30 or 31 days, except February, in the Chinese calendar, a month is by definition one lunar cycle (~29.5 days), therefore months alternate between 29 and 30 days.
During the Warring States Period in China's history (c. 475-221 B.C.), astronomers refined the year in the "Sifen Calendar" to 365.25 days, establishing a 19-year cycle with 7 leap months intercalating the sun and moon.
In 104 B.C., during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) the Taichu Calendar Reform marked the start of the traditional Chinese calendar's continuous, standardized system.
During the 17th century's Ming and Qing Dynasties, Jesuit missionaries from Europe, perhaps most notably Johann Adam Schall von Bell, brought advanced astronomical calculations, leading to greater accuracy.