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The 13th Month They Deleted Why the World Switched to 12 — Transcript

by Erased Century · 2,489 words · 414 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00September means seventh, but it is the
0:02ninth month of the year. October means
0:04eighth, but it is the 10th month of the
0:06year.
0:07November means ninth, and December means
0:0910th. Every single one of these names is
0:12wrong.
0:13You learned these words before you could
0:14read. You have used them every day of
0:16your life. They are not slightly off,
0:18not debatable, not open to
0:20interpretation. September is the ninth
0:22month, but its Latin root means seven.
0:25October is the 10th month, but octo
0:27means eight. Septem, octo, novem, decem
0:30are the Latin words for 7, 8, 9, 10.
0:33Those names belong to a calendar that no
0:34longer exists. Someone added months to
0:37the beginning of the year and pushed
0:39everything forward. That edit happened
0:41roughly 2,700 years ago, and we are
0:44still living inside it.
0:46That is not even the strange part of
0:48this story. The strange part is what was
0:50there before the edit. What was removed,
0:52and who benefits from you never asking
0:54about it. There are 13 full moons in a
0:57solar year, not 12. 13. The lunar cycle,
1:01new moon to new moon, takes
1:03approximately 29 and 1/2 days. Multiply
1:05that by 12, and you get 354 days. You
1:09are 11 days short of a year.
1:11But multiply 28 by 13, and you get 364.
1:15One day short. One single day that
1:17ancient cultures handled with a
1:18festival, a day outside of time, a reset
1:21before the new year began. The math is
1:23cleaner with 13. It has always been
1:26cleaner with 13, and humanity knew this
1:28for thousands of years before anyone
1:30intervened.
1:32In 1960, a Belgian archaeologist named
1:35Jean de Heinzelin made a discovery on
1:37the shores of Lake Edward. The site sits
1:39on the border between Uganda and the
1:41Democratic Republic of Congo. The object
1:44was small, the Ishango Bone, a baboon
1:47fibula roughly the size of a pencil with
1:49a sharp piece of quartz fixed to one
1:51end. Carved into its surface are three
1:54rows of grouped notches. It has been
1:56dated to approximately 20,000 years ago.
2:00That makes it one of the oldest
2:01mathematical artifacts ever found.
2:03Harvard archaeologist Alexander Marshack
2:05put the bone under a microscope and
2:07concluded the notches correspond to
2:09lunar cycles, six months of them.
2:12Ethnomathematician Claudia Zaslavsky
2:14went further. She proposed the bones
2:16creator was likely a woman tracking her
2:19menstrual cycle against the phases of
2:21the moon. The average menstrual cycle is
2:2329.3 days. The lunar cycle is 29.5.
2:28In dozens of languages, the words for
2:29month and moon share the same root. The
2:32Gaelic words for menstruation and
2:34calculation are identical, miosach and
2:37miosachan. The Romans literally called
2:39the measurement of time menstruation.
2:41This was not a metaphor. It was a
2:43description. Humanity's first act of
2:46counting may have been a woman watching
2:48the moon and marking the days between
2:50bleedings, 13 times a year. For 20,000
2:54years or more, that was how humans
2:55understood time. Not because someone
2:57told them to, because the sky told them
2:59to. Then Rome happened.
3:02The earliest Roman calendar, attributed
3:04to Romulus around 738 BCE, had only 10
3:07months, 304 days. The year started in
3:11March and ended in December. Winter was
3:13simply uncounted, a blank space on the
3:15calendar where nothing officially
3:17happened. Around 713 BCE, Rome's second
3:21king, Numa Pompilius, decided to fill
3:24that gap. He added two new months,
3:26January and February, to the calendar.
3:28To get enough days, he shortened the
3:30existing 30-day months to 29.
3:33February was left with 28 because it was
3:35the month given over to the infernal
3:36gods. Even the Romans considered it
3:39cursed.
3:40But here is what matters about Numa's
3:41reform. He did not just add months.
3:44He created a system where the timing of
3:46additional months, called
3:48intercalations, was controlled
3:49exclusively by a board of priests called
3:52the pontifices.
3:54Their decisions about when to add time
3:55were kept secret. And Roman politicians
3:58quickly realized something. If you
4:00control the calendar, you control power.
4:03A consul could extend his own term by
4:05persuading the pontifices to add an
4:07intercalary month or shorten a rival's
4:09term by having them skip one. Calendar
4:12manipulation became so corrupt that by
4:14the 1st century BCE, the Roman calendar
4:17was three full months out of alignment
4:19with the seasons. Harvest festivals
4:21happened before crops were taken in.
4:23Julius Caesar had to add 90 extra days
4:25to a single year, 46 BCE, just to reset
4:29the system. He called it the last year
4:31of confusion.
4:32But the confusion was not an accident.
4:34It was the residue of centuries of
4:36institutional calendar control.
4:38And the 12-month structure that emerged
4:40from Caesar's reform became the
4:42foundation we still use today. Nobody
4:44voted on it. Nobody studied
4:46alternatives. A dictator imposed it and
4:49the world inherited it.
4:51Now, the fair counter argument. The
4:53Gregorian calendar, the one you are
4:55using right now, is genuinely more
4:57accurate for tracking the solar year
4:59than anything that came before it.
5:01The Julian calendar drifted about 1 day
5:03every 128 years.
5:06The Gregorian system, introduced by Pope
5:08Gregory the 13th in 1582, corrected that
5:11drift by adjusting the leap year rules.
5:13It works. Astronomically, it is elegant.
5:16I'm not arguing it fails at what it
5:18does. I'm asking a different question.
5:20Who decided that solar accuracy should
5:22override lunar alignment? Who decided
5:25that the relationship between humans and
5:27the moon, the oldest timekeeping
5:29relationship in human history, should be
5:31sacrificed for a system that serves
5:33institutions rather than biology?
5:35Because the Gregorian reform was not
5:37neutral. It was a deletion.
5:40On October 4, 1582, people in Catholic
5:42Europe went to bed on a Thursday. They
5:45They up on Friday, October 15th, 10 days
5:47erased, not gradually phased out, not
5:50adjusted over years, removed overnight
5:53by papal decree. Pope Gregory chose
5:55October specifically because it
5:57contained the fewest major Christian
5:59holidays. Workers did not know if they
6:01would be paid for the missing days.
6:03Contracts scheduled between October 5th
6:05and October 14th suddenly referenced
6:08dates that had never existed. And the
6:10Vatican's response was simple. Those
6:13days were never real. Protestant
6:15countries refused to comply. England
6:17held out until 1752, 170 years later,
6:21when Parliament finally adopted the
6:23Gregorian calendar.
6:25September 2nd was followed by September
6:2714th. The change affected wages, rents,
6:30military discharges, and prison
6:31sentences. Accounts from the period
6:33described public outrage. The famous
6:36cry, "Give us back our 11 days." may be
6:39partly mythologized,
6:41but the sentiment was real.
6:43People understood instinctively that
6:44when someone edits your calendar, they
6:46are editing something more fundamental
6:48than dates.
6:49They are editing your experience of
6:51reality itself.
6:53If time can be rewritten by decree,
6:55what else can be?
6:57And yet, what happened next is the part
6:59almost nobody talks about. In 1902, a
7:02British railway accountant named Moses
7:04Cotsworth proposed something radical, a
7:06calendar with 13 months, each month
7:09exactly 28 days. Every day falling on
7:12the same weekday every year. The first
7:14of every month always a Sunday. The
7:17extra month placed between June and July
7:19would be called Sol. One additional day
7:21at year's end called Year Day would sit
7:24outside any month or week, a global
7:26holiday belonging to no one. Cotsworth
7:28was not a mystic. He was an accountant
7:30driven mad by a specific problem.
7:33Monthly financial reports at his
7:35railroad company were meaningless
7:36because months had different numbers of
7:38days and different distributions of
7:40weekdays.
7:41A hotel doing $10,000 per week in room
7:44sales would show lower revenue in May
7:46than April.
7:47Not because business declined, because
7:49May had fewer weekends that year.
7:52Think about what that means for every
7:53salaried worker alive today. You earn
7:55the same monthly paycheck whether the
7:57month has 28 days or 31. That is a 10%
8:01swing in your daily rate of pay and it
8:03always favors the employer.
8:06Your landlord charges identical rent for
8:08February and for March despite March
8:09having three extra days. Quarterly
8:12financial comparisons are unreliable
8:13because quarters range from 90 to 92
8:16days. The entire global economy runs on
8:18a unit of measurement, the month, that
8:21has no fixed size. We would never
8:23tolerate this in any other domain.
8:25Imagine a kilogram that weighed
8:26something different each time you placed
8:28it on a scale.
8:30That is what a month does to money.
8:31Cotsworth saw this clearly and he wanted
8:34to fix it. His proposal gained powerful
8:36allies. George Eastman, founder of the
8:38Eastman Kodak company, became obsessed
8:40with the idea. In 1928, Eastman adopted
8:43the 13-month calendar for Kodak's
8:45internal operations. Every financial
8:48period equal, every comparison clean,
8:51every payday predictable. Kodak
8:53employees carried pocket calendars with
8:5513 months. Boardrooms displayed the
8:57fixed calendar on their walls.
8:59The system worked so well that Kodak
9:01used it for 61 years until 1989.
9:0557 years after Eastman's death, a
9:07Fortune 500 company ran on 13 months for
9:10more than half a century and it worked
9:12better than 12.
9:13Eastman did not stop at Kodak. He and
9:15Cotsworth wrote to more than a thousand
9:17businesses. They opened the
9:18International Fixed Calendar League
9:20headquartered at Kodak's offices in
9:22Rochester, New York. Sir Sanford
9:24Fleming, the man who invented standard
9:26time zones, became its first president.
9:28The League of Nations reviewed 130
9:31calendar proposals from around the
9:32world. They ranked Cotsworth's 13-month
9:35system as the best. It went to a vote,
9:37and religious leaders organized to
9:39destroy it. Rabbi Joseph Hertz argued
9:42that Year Day, which belonged to no
9:44week, would create an 8-day week once
9:46per year. This would disrupt the
9:48perpetual 7-day Sabbath cycle.
9:51The opposition was fierce, coordinated,
9:53and effective. The proposal failed.
9:55After Eastman died in 1932, the League
9:58of Nations continued discussing reform,
10:00but could not reach consensus.
10:02Then came Hitler.
10:04Then came World War II.
10:07The League dissolved. No international
10:09body has seriously considered calendar
10:11reform since. 13 months came within one
10:14vote of becoming the global standard.
10:16Then, it was buried. Not by logic, not
10:19by evidence, by institutional resistance
10:21from organizations whose authority is
10:23structured around the calendar as it
10:25exists. I want to be honest about
10:27something. I sat with this research for
10:29a long time before writing. The reason
10:31is simple. The mainstream explanation
10:34for why we use 12 months is not stupid.
10:37Solar calendars are more practical for
10:39agriculture in many climates. The
10:41Gregorian system does not require
10:43constant adjustment the way lunisolar
10:45calendars do.
10:46If you need to know when to plant crops
10:48at a specific latitude, the sun matters
10:50more than the moon.
10:52I understand why solar calendars won.
10:54What I cannot explain is why 13 had to
10:57become feared in the process. The word
10:59triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number
11:0113, was first documented in 1910. But
11:04scholars who have searched for ancient
11:06evidence of 13 being considered unlucky
11:08have found none. The association with
11:11the Last Supper, 13 people at the table,
11:13appears to be a medieval invention.
11:16The Norse myth about Loki as the 13th
11:18guest at a banquet does not appear in
11:20the original source texts the way it is
11:22commonly told.
11:24Buildings skip the 13th floor. Airlines
11:26skip row 13. Streets in London,
11:29including Fleet Street, Park Lane, and
11:31Oxford Street, have no number 13. In
11:331882, a Civil War veteran named William
11:36Fowler founded the 13 Club in New York
11:38City. 13 members met on the 13th of
11:41every month in room 13 of the
11:43Knickerbocker Cottage. They walked under
11:45ladders. They mocked the superstition.
11:48The inaugural dinner was at 8:13 p.m. on
11:50Friday, January 13, 1882.
11:53The cruel irony is that the club's
11:55publicity may have spread the very fear
11:57it tried to debunk.
11:59But where did the fear originate? One
12:01theory connects it directly to
12:02calendars. 12 is considered complete. 12
12:06months, 12 hours, 12 zodiac signs, 12
12:08apostles. 13 breaks the pattern. 13
12:11suggests something was supposed to be
12:13there that someone removed. You do not
12:15fear a number without a reason. You fear
12:17it because somewhere, deep in cultural
12:20memory, 13 represented something that
12:22had to be suppressed.
12:24And here is what keeps pulling me back.
12:26Ethiopia still uses 13 months.
12:29Right now, today. 12 months of 30 days
12:33each, plus a 13th month called Pagume, 5
12:36days long, six in a leap year. Their
12:38system derives from the ancient Coptic
12:40calendar, which traces to Egypt. Their
12:42tourism slogan is, and I'm not making
12:44this up, 13 months of sunshine. Over 120
12:48million people live on a 13-month
12:50calendar. Their leap year system is
12:52simpler than ours. Their months are
12:54uniform. Their year starts in September,
12:56which, under their reckoning, actually
12:58makes sense. They never adopted the
13:00Gregorian system. They were never
13:02colonized into it. And their calendar
13:04works. It has worked for centuries. When
13:06travelers land in Addis Ababa, their
13:08phones adjust the date automatically.
13:11The shift is disorienting. You step off
13:13a plane, and you are suddenly seven or
13:15eight years younger. Not because
13:17Ethiopia miscounted, because they
13:19started from a different calculation of
13:21the same event, and never let anyone
13:23overwrite their math. Ethiopia is not
13:25behind. Ethiopia refused to delete what
13:27we deleted. Think about what you were
13:29taught. 30 days has September, April,
13:32June, and November. All the rest have
13:3431, except February. You needed a
13:37nursery rhyme to remember your own
13:39calendar. That should tell you
13:40something. A system designed for human
13:43use would not require a poem to decode.
13:46No child struggles to understand 13 *
13:4828. Any child can grasp that. But 30,
13:5231, 28, sometimes 29?
13:55That requires memorization.
13:57It requires a rhyme. It requires faith
14:00in a structure that resists intuition.
14:02Kodak proved equal months work.
14:05The League of Nations ranked them best.
14:07Ethiopia runs on them today.
14:09The Ishango bone suggests humans counted
14:12in 13s for 20,000 years before anyone
14:14intervened.
14:16Your body still counts in cycles of
14:18roughly 28 days. The moon still
14:20completes 13 cycles every year. The
14:22biology has not changed. The astronomy
14:25has not changed. Only the calendar
14:27changed.
14:28And every time someone tried to change
14:29it back, the proposal was killed. Not by
14:32science, not by popular demand, by
14:34institutions whose power depends on
14:36controlling how we measure time. I find
14:39myself thinking about the pontifices,
14:41Rome's calendar priests, keeping their
14:43intercalation decisions secret, using
14:46time itself as a lever of political
14:48control. That was 2,700 years ago. The
14:51mechanisms have changed. The principle
14:53has not.
14:55Whoever controls the calendar controls
14:57what feels normal.
14:59And once something feels normal, no one
15:01questions it.
15:02We cannot name our months correctly.
15:05We cannot remember how many days they
15:06contain.
15:07We carry a nursery rhyme in our heads
15:09because the system is too irrational to
15:11memorize on its own, and we never ask
15:13why. That 20,000-year-old bone sits in a
15:16museum in Brussels. Its notches still
15:19line up with the moon. The sky still
15:21counts to 13. The only question is why
15:23we stopped.

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