Talk:Coligny calendar

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Contents

[edit] Dispute: Start of year: Samhain/Samon

The assumption that the Irish Samhain and Gaulish Samon refer to the same period may be based on inaccurate information. There is extensive and detailed information to support this assertion at the following locations:

Samhain is not the 'Celtic new year'

Responses to 'The Celtic New Year'

I'll give this a couple of weeks, do some additional research, and then come back to consider an edit.

Lumin 00:26, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Meanwhile I edited to state that there is disagreement, and why. --Nantonos 12:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Celtic Art

I don't know about "celtic art". It's an unadorned table. "Art of timekeeping", if you like, but Celtic art seems more about the 'fine arts'. dab (ᛏ) 18:19, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It might be a stretch. Theres not too much fine Celtic art before the middle ages I think. Im not sure if celtic calendars are included in the study of celtic art prior to the middle ages or not. Stbalbach 18:34, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
ah, there are a lot of artefacts, little animal figurines, reliefs, jewellery, the Gundestrup cauldron, that sort of thing. Also consider the stuff found in Chariot burials, and Gaulish and British coins [1]. dab (ᛏ) 18:39, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yeah see I dont know much about it pre-Middle Ages. The question is, do art historians include Celtic calenders as part of their study. I dont know, seemed reasonable. Stbalbach 19:05, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute: Start of month: Full Moon or New Moon? (Neither?)

The article currently states:

the months were lunar, starting at the full moon (see lunar calendar).

and yet in Caesars Gallic Wars:

[6.18] All the Gauls assert that they are descended from the god Dis, and say that this tradition has been handed down by the Druids. For that reason they compute the divisions of every season, not by the number of days, but of nights; they keep birthdays and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night.

The interpretation of atenoux as "returning night" is improbable (Delamarre p.58) and "renewing" would seem more probable; thus the month would start at new moon and atenoux would indicate the renewal, ie the full moon. --Nantonos 23:46, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Meanwhile I edited to talk about the first half and the second half, and added the lengths of them (whichwas missing). Noted that scholars disagree on whether the start was the new or full moon, although the Caesar quote seems fairly compelling in fact. --Nantonos 12:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Pliny (re: the Gauls,) and Tacitus (re: the Germans*) both tell us that, for their primary religious or civic cycles, the European tribes both favored the moon phase that is "after new but not having reached full": in other words the First Quarter (the sixth night the moon could possibly be seen). The various statements by modern writers suggesting that all lunar calendars ("must") have been calibrated from Full(or New Moon) do not often cite the reasons why they say so and we are left to assume that they assume-so because that is how things were done in the Hebrew and the Islamic calendars. Central Europe was and still is is a long way from the Middle East. Anyone who looks up at the actual moon might find that the dead-straight terminator on the "D"-shaped First-Quarter is far easier to judge to the day/by-eye precisely than the several days on either side of Full where, visually its absolute "fullness" is dramatically ambiguous. This is why I feel that if the ancient Europeans actually did use the First Quarter to calibrate their calendar it would not be difficult at all to build a compelling case for the "why" behind it.

Take the quote from Pliny in the article and compare this from Tacitus' Germania: "except in the case of accident or emergency, they assemble on certain particular days, either shortly after the new moon or shortly before the full moon. These they hold are the most auspicious times for embarking on any enterprise."

--Earrach April 2nd, 2007


[edit] Number of Days in 30-year cycle

The article asserts that the mean month in the 30-year cycle is 29.534 days. This is consistent with a 30-year cycle of 10957 days and a mean year of about 365.237 days. I see no justification of this assertion in the article or in the linking web pages.

A 30-year cycle of 10956 days would provide a more accurate mean month of 29.531 days, but a less accurate mean year (365.2 days). The mean year could then be corrected by ADDING an extra month about once every 600 years. The 30-year cycle of 10956 days can be implemented by simply adding a leap day to each 5-year cycle, where years otherwise have 354 days and excluding leap months, which have 30 days.

I don't know how many days did actually occur in a 30-year cycle or whether this is known at all. Any assertion to the effect needs backing up.

--Karl Palmen 31 August 2005 10:40 UT

Adding a leap day has an obvious problem in that it shifts the month cycle relative to the lunar cycle. You suggest adding a leap day every five years; after only 35 years the lunar cycle would be out of phase by a quarter cycle, which would be glaringly obvious, no?
As for corrections over a 600 year period, who knows whether the calendar was in use over such an extended period? --Nantonos 16:57, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Here are the mean years and mean lunar months for different numbers of days in the 30-year cycle (of 371 lunar months)

Number of Days   Mean Year   Mean Month
 10955           365.1667    29.529302
 10956           365.2       29.530997
 10957           365.2333    29.533693

The web pages referenced by the article do not agree on the number of days in the Coligny calendar's 30-year cycle. Any assertion concerning the number of days actually occurring in the 30-year cycle needs backing up with a credible reference.

Karl Palmen 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Small sigils

I suspect that this comes from the neopagan The Celtic Tradition by Caitlin Matthews, which is the only source cited by [2] which, in turn, is I suspect the source of some of this article. I would like to see some better documentation for these "sigils" which are not mentioned in the academic books on the subject. --Nantonos 16:17, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Monard

The article currently gives the impression that Monard was the originator of much of the information presented. Since his works date to 1996-1999 and the scholarship on the Calendar dates to 1899, this is unlikely. --Nantonos 16:17, 8 October 2005 (UTC)