Today is the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. My ancestors, the Gaels (aka Kelts which just means foreign barbarians in Greek, the bastards) had a multi-thousand year culture, trading ships along the coastlines from the Baltic to Ireland, to the Mediterranean and Alexandria and the Black Sea. A big culture. The Roman Catholics destroyed most of what they found because an older advanced culture with serious mathematics and an accurate calendar clearly needed to die in favor of the Emperor's new xtian faith. Ahem.
You can always tell a truly advanced culture that has the accurate calendars. Of course, some of those cultures turned to human sacrifice or ritual killing, so not exactly perfect. Just advanced.
My friend That Guy(tm) suggested how interesting it would have been if during the Dark Ages the Gaels recovered and the Romans collapsed, leaving their accurate calendar but their peculiar time keeping system. Gaels have a 6 hour day, defined as divisions during the light, with mid day being noon, at the sun's height. And since the minutes in the day change every day and you don't have time zones, keeping time becomes both local and somewhat complicated by geography if you try to do it mechanically. Clocks we use have standard hours, minutes, and seconds, and the hours of light aren't relevant to this system. But the Gaels based their math on the solar calendar and knew about the moon and stars and figured out the whole thing in a way the Romans never did. And the Romans killed people who pointed out the flaws. That's the trouble with superior military powers built on violence.
Winter officially begins today, and the days start getting longer again tomorrow.
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