Julius Caesar gave us Leap Day

[AllardChardon]

Back in 48 B.C. after learning about the calendar the Egyptians used in Queen Cleopatra's day. I read about it on yahoo.news and wondered where we picked up this habit.

I prefer the Mayan Calendar, 13 lunar cylces of 28 days with one day "out of time", the same day each year, July 25th, I think, or the 24th. I keep looking it up and then forgetting it again.

 

[cantdog]

You can't get the moon to go along, though, and take a stutter step once a year to align with the solar orbit. Using a Mayan calendar, the months would begin at different parts of the lunar phase changes, all the time. Real lunar calendars which allow the moon to tell one when a month begins or ends all respect the moon enough to set the new moon or the full or something as the 'beginning of the lunar month.'

Because lunar calendars precess through the solar year, they are not very useful for agricultural purposes, which are tied to seasons, and thus to the solar year.

You can insert intercalary days, as the Mayans did, or tack them onto months, as the Julian and Gregorian calendars did, but you lose any clear relation of the moon to the month when you do.