How many days are there in a year? The question seems to be simple, because any first-grader knows the answer - 365. And in a leap year - 366. But not everything is so simple. Let's clarify - in what year? In order not to make a mistake with the answer to the question: "How many days are there in a year?", we must first decide on which calendar we will calculate the length of the year - according to the lunar, solar or solar-lunar?
Counting time is a complex matter. Subjectively, it seems to us that it goes either faster, or slower, or galloping, or crawling like a turtle. You can't rely on your feelings. Therefore, people turned to what they considered unshakable: the rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon and the stars. Especially since the stars are closer than the Sun, just not.
The most obvious time unit was the day. It is nothing more than one light and one dark range of time, or day and night. This was clear even in the deep Paleolithic.
Over time, it became more or less clear to people what a year is. This is the time between those days when the Sun appears at the same point in the sky. How many days in a year? The answer was also found enoughfast. A year was approximately 365 days.
But counting the length of the year as days is inconvenient. It was necessary to group the days into some other intermediate unit of measurement. Such a unit was found, and it became the lunar month. The natural night light was visible to ancient people from anywhere on Earth, so since the same Paleolithic people began to count time in accordance with the phases of the moon. Archaeologists regularly find evidence of this.
But here's the problem - the duration of the solar year of the month was not divided without a remainder by the duration of the lunar month. Moreover, the lunar month lasts an incomplete number of days. It ranges from 27.5 to 29.5 days. 12 lunar months, or lunar year, are therefore 354 or 355 days. That's 10 or 11 days short of the solar year!
Nevertheless, for example, in Islam, the year is still considered according to the lunar calendar. And for a faithful Muslim, it is obvious how many days are in a year - 354 or 355. The beginning of each year in Islam is floating. The nearest Islamic New Year falls on 05.11.2013. On this day, 1435 Hijri will begin for Muslims. The Muslims adopted the year 622 as the starting point for the chronology, when, fearing for his life, Muhammad, together with his comrades, fled from Mecca to neighboring Medina.
There is also a lunisolar calendar. This is, for example, the Jewish calendar. The lunar month is also taken as a basis. The year begins on the spring full moon - Easter - and lasts 12 months, of course, lunar. But to bridge the gap betweenlunar and solar years, a whole additional lunar month is periodically added. This happens in leap years. Moreover, the duration of the month is tied to the phases of the moon. A month can only begin on a new moon. So, it turns out, according to the Jewish calendar, there can be 353, and 354, and 355, and 383, and 384, and 385 days in a year. So how many days are there in a year?
The most common, and, perhaps, the most convenient calendar is solar, where the period of revolution of our planet around the Sun is taken as a year. And its duration is known to any student. So, according to the solar calendar, how many days are there in a year? 2013 is not a leap year, so it has 365 days. But the previous one, 2012, was a leap year and had a length of 366 days.
