The units of time
heritage from a distant past
Often ancient civilisations seem to have had capabilities and knowledge that are difficult to explain on the base of the supposed scientific and technological level of their time, so that we are led to assume that they were inherited from a previous unknown civilisation, much more advanced.
For example the existence of renaissance maps (Piri Reis, Oronteus Finnaeus, Mercator…) with longitude accuracies considered impossible at that time, and the representation of Antarctica as it appeared at the end of Pleistocene, was so inexplicable that a scientist like Charles Hapgood postulated the existence, sometime before 8,000 years ago, of an unknown civilisation able to chart the whole world with extreme precision.
But it’s not necessary to look for challenging knowledge and capabilities in order to find evidence of that kind. Indeed knowledge and figures still currently used can provide straightforward evidence that they originated in a very distant past by an unknown civilisation, whose technological level was much more advanced than that of all known ancient civilisations.
Here we consider something apparently insignificant and devoid of any hidden meaning: the presently used unit of time, the second. It’s a unit used throughout the world, which characterizes every instant of our life and is fundamental for the description of every physical phenomenon. We can hardly underestimate its importance, and yet we ignore what is the origin and the meaning of this unit, that we have inherited with no indication whatsoever about the author, the epoch and the reasons that determined the choice of its magnitude.
The current opinion is that it originated by the ancient Sumerians because of their sexagesimal accounting system. In fact 86,400 is a number clearly connected to that system, as it can be divided into 24 hours of 60 minutes, each minute consisting of 60 seconds. Same origin can be hypothesised for the convention of dividing the circle into 360 degrees, each one of 60 minutes of 60 seconds of arc.
The problem is that we don’t have the faintest idea how and why the Sumerian sexagesimal system originated. It’s more likely, on the contrary, that it was that particular unit of time that originated such strange, almost absurd, accounting system. And in any case, we don’t know what the magnitude of this unit of time represents. Was it a casual choice or instead a length of time with a meaningful connection to some particular astronomical magnitude? Was it invented by the Sumerians or instead the Sumerians inherited it by a previous civilisation, as we did by them ?
THE ROOTS OF MESOAMERICAN CIVILISATION
The evidence that we find in the calendars and the accounting systems of Central America is no less important than that of Eurasia, with a fundamental difference: they clearly derive from the natural unit of time, U, which is the 80.000th part of the day.
Aztecs, Mayas, Toltechs, and Olmechs before them, had in common an accounting system on base 20 and a calendar based on an auxiliary year of 260 days (called “Tzolkin” by the Mayas), divided in 20 weeks of 13 days, and on an auxiliary century of 52 years. The solar year was divided in 18 months of 20 days each, for a total of 360 days, to which they added 5 final days considered inauspicious and therefore “non-existent”.
Extraordinary importance was given to all combinations of numbers derived from the intertwine of the solar year with the auxiliary year, inside a period of 52 years. For example:
365 x 52 = 260 x 73;
360 x 52 = 260 x 72 ;
360 x 13 = 260 x 18
and so on in an extraordinary intertwine that deeply impressed the modern scholars who studied it.
This calendar played a fundamental role in central American societies, regulating their existence day by day in a overwhelming way (as today’s calendars, to be objective). Obviously it exerted a strong fascination upon generations of scholars, who dedicated hundred of books to its description. Several attempts have been made to explain the origin of this numerical system and of this calendar, most of which awkward and improbable.
A simple and immediate explanation is that they inherited them by the same previous civilisation, which had established the natural unit of time, U, and a calendar based on the 128 years cycle (we have to remember that 1/80,000 days is exactly the average error per year during such a cycle).
The unit of time
heritage from a distant past
The roots of Mesoamerican civilisation
THE FOLLOWING ESSAYES HAVE NOT BEEN TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH YET
THE CULTURE
ANALYSIS OF A CONCEPT
Culture is not a set of human behaviors neither of knowledge however defined
Culture is the whole of the values that we attribute to the whole of our knowledge and it is precisely what determine all human behaviors
ANCIENT AND MODERN CALENDARS
The origin and the characteristics of the civil calendar
The ancient Egyptian calendar
UFO
THE TERRESTRIAL HYPOTESIS
Historical content of ancient mythologies
The subterranean world - source of every technological innovation in the mythological times
The other humankind