Polo

Today I watched a game of polo - first time I've ever seen it. It was great! On a wide, brilliant green field in the evening sun the two teams rode around on horses, all together, galloping and turning and swinging long sticks to hit the ball. When they're riding they hold the stick upright, so they look like a load of knights thundering around the field.

weeks

Who invented the week?

A week is different from a day or a year or a month because it's artificial. For cave-people a day is pretty easy to notice: it gets dark, it gets light, then when it starts to get dark again you know that a day has passed - plants and insects get this, and people must have caught on quickly too. A year is sort of long term, but again people would notice that the weather gets colder and warmer, plants and animals come and go, etc. A month... well, the moon comes and goes with the months (more or less - and in the Islamic calendar the moon is King in determining the months), which affects the tides, which affects fishing etc; also menstruation? ...

But a week is really an invention. I think in some parts of the world they have five-day week - that is, there's a market day every five days, I think that's the main thing that distinguishes a week. Who decided there would be seven days in a week?

... Well, now I know the answers to a lot of the above, having looked "week" up in wikipedia. For example, I know now that some societies have a week of three days, or eight; and that the "French Revolutionary Calendar had 36 weeks of 10 days and five or six extra days". It seems that weeks are mostly for purposes of commerce: market day, work days and rest days, etc. So weeks are unique to humans: birds, bees and educated fleas do without weeks, as do the Sun, moon and planets.