The variety of dating elements

Events of the distant past can be properly compared with each other and organized in a single world history only if it was possible to accurately determine when one or the other of them took place, i.e., if they were duly dated. People have understood this for a long time. And, trying to convey a logically connected story about their activities to the descendants, they used all the natural units of the time account - for the year, month, week, or more precisely - the calendar, which, based on the needs of life and skill, they brought to a certain levelperfection. This allowed to date events not just "this or that year" or "such and such a month", but more precisely: "this and that day of the month," "on such and such a day of the week."

However, over time, any document was corrupted, which, of course, applies to the elements of its dating - the year number, the number of months, etc. Therefore, the more these elements appear on the document, the greater the likelihood that it will last longerauthenticity.

Certainly, any element of dating is easier to remember and learn to use if it is cyclic, that is, if it is repeated after a certain period of time. Such calendar characteristics, and they are just discussed below, and were developed at the beginning of the first millennium AD.These are the circles of the Sun and Moon, the yuklets( Sunday letters), indicts, epaktas, contestants, etc. The compiler of one or another document, other than the year and month number, sometimes indicated another indicator, the circle of the Sun, etc., and sometimes onlythese last characteristics of the year or( worse) just one of them. And yet, thanks to them, it was possible to verify the correctness of the dating( or restore it) of many documents, especially those compiled in the countries of Western Europe.

Given the exceptional importance for the chronology of all listed above calendar characteristics, we also provide them in the tables, and give elementary formulas for their calculation.

It would be superfluous to emphasize that just the use for many hundreds of years of such cyclic dating elements as the circle of the Sun and the ship, and contributed to the development of a different type of "perpetual calendars."Up until the last time, especially in Western Europe, Easter was an important element of dating and associated "mobile" holidays. In the past, in many Catholic countries, from the day of Easter, the beginning of the year was counted.

The chronological style is the definition of the beginning of the year. In this sense, both calendar January, while the "new style" in the XX and XXI centuries.ahead of the "old style" for 13 days.

We also note that we are counting the years in the "our era"( AD), which, under the name of the era from the "Nativity of Christ", was introduced in 525 by a Roman monk, papal archivist, Scythian by birth Dionysius the Lesser. To determine the circles of the sun and the moon, the vestiges and indicts also use the era of "the creation of the world," and there are two variants of it, or style - the September one with the era of September 1, 5509 BC.e.and March with the era of March 1, 5508 BC.e. This second era also has the name of Constantinople, as well as Old Russian. At the transition from the year n.e. R to the Byzantine year from the "creation of the world" In the September style, the following relations should be used: in January-August B = 5508 + R( in turn R = B - 5508), in September - December B = 5509 + R( R = B -5509).For the March style in March - December B = 5508 + R and in January - February B = 5507 + R. The September style goes ahead of March for six months.