Months created by women?

[delilabell]

I saw a sandi toksvig quote yesterday and it got me thinking. It was about how 28bdays had been marked on a prehistoric bone. So possibly it was women marking tjebdays of their cycle.
Womens cycles are generally a month long. As are months. So does this mean women created months?
Or are months based on the moon so our cycles follow the moon. Which again I think is amazing.
I know this is random ramblings but it all just popped into my head the other day.

There was a 'thing' on MN some time ago that things went weird at the full moon, and for a while the Talk home page in the browser had a phase of the moon image. Doesn't seem to be there now.

Do any cultures have a different 'week' length, or none? I think I once read that when france was trying to get everything nicely rational and decimal, they tried a ten day week but it didn't work out.

I once read that before colonialisation, some places in Africa had a three day 'week' , every third day was market day and that just went on always. The seasons are different there due to being so close to the equator, so rather that the 4 seasons we experience, it was just two seasons, wet and dry.

Women do sync with the moon. I have always bled with the moon. We live in nature amongst many people who have 'returned to the land' .. peoole who are back living alongside natural cycles, and most women here cycle with the moon.

Periods, being 'moon time' for teaching the younger girls.

Mens-truation, menses, from latin 'mensis' meaning moon.

Month = moonth

All my friends who are midwives say full moon is busiest time on maternity ward.

I know the Ancient Egyptians had a 10 day week. They had 12 months of 30 days with each week being each phase of the moon. They then had 5 days called epagomenales which were the birthdays of the five gods/goddesses- Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Seth and Horus.

13 moons a year though, women have 13 periods (generally). 13 is the unlucky number.... Or so patriarchy tells us of course....

Not patriarchy, but Christianity. 13 was a lucky number to the Celts & the Scandanavian polytheistic cultures.

To the Christian missionaries it was the number preferred by devil worshippers.

The periods 'synching' theory has been completely debunked.

Do languages other than English have similar words for moon and month?
Answer after a quick survey: some do, some don't. Eg:

French : lune / mois
Spanish: luna / mes
Slovak: mesiac - the same word unless Google Translate has got stuck
Swedish: mane / manad

Sorry i said mensis = moon, but i meant mensis = month!

Christianity = patriarchy, no?

I have witnessed periods sync, my doula said that she often bled a little at people's births. I had a really heavy period recently and two friends bled at the same time, even though it wasnt their period normally, so debunked or not I definitely think there is some connection.

Iv never understood the period synching thing my period is every 28 days like clockwork for as long as I can remember ( minus a break for pregnancies ) so how would that work 🤔

No, Christianity doesn’t equal patriarchy.
When/where 13 was/is a lucky number, there is still patriarchy.

Babara G walker's (FANTASTIC) book ' The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths & Secrets' ( which I totally reccomend - won London Times Educational book of the year 1986)

Says, under 'menstrual cycle':

''two conficting calendars used during mostmof the Christian era in Europe. The church's official solar calendar, and peasants unnofficial, lunar, goddess-given menstrual calendar....

.... Calendar consciousness developed first in women, because of their natural cycle, correlated with observations of the moon's phases. Chinese women established a lunar calendar 3000 years ago...

Gaelic word for 'menstruation' and 'calendar' are the same - 'miosach' and 'miosachan'...

...in generak the symbols of ancient matriarchy came to be known as night, the moon and number 13. While those of patriarchy were day, the sun, and number 12.''

There us so much under the entry it is fascinating, I cant type it all.

I very much reccomend this book. I wonder what an ROGD girl might think to read it.

Maybe we need to start shining some moonlight onto these gender issues.

The very long entry under 'witch hunting' is absolutely mind blowing.

It has been debunked.
In all the cultures with zero hormonal contraception and menstruation huts, there’s never once been a case of all the women in a family or village being in the hut at once. These huts are always small too- built to accommodate a handful of girls/women cycling in and out. Periods do not synch up by any natural means.

All credit to May, June, and Julie, I suppose!

Maybe it would not occur accross a village but just within houses. I have alway bled with the women I live with.

Christianity took over from the pagan, female worshipping religions. It was male dominated. It was a patriarchal domination. Women went from sacred to dirty.

The witch burning, one of the most patriarchal atrocities in recent centuries was at the hands of christianity.

The worship of the father and the son overtook the worship of the mother. Adam before Eve. It is pure patriarchy, in my opinion.

Chinese women established a lunar calendar 3000 years ago...

Im sorry but your 1986 book is chock full of outdated and incorrect info. The Chinese have had a lunisolar calendar for almost 6,000 yrs. Emperor Huangdi introduced it around 2637 BCE. It is also thought that his minister Ta Nao prepared the first calendar, called the Chia-tzu or Kan-chih system, which is translated as “the system of cyclical characters”.

Ps i think you saying ''there’s never once been a case of all the women in a family or village being in the hut at once.'' is probably untrue, its quite a large statement there.

@BlessedKali
Christianity took over from the pagan, female worshipping religions. It was male dominated. It was a patriarchal domination. Women went from sacred to dirty.

Lol. No it didn’t. It replaced earlier male dominated religions.

Our various pagan European religions at the time of conversion were not female worshipping but polytheistic with goddesses ruled by gods- patriarchy even applied to goddesses.

Yes possibly outdated... Although 40 years is miniscule when we are talking about 3000 years. China is a big place aswell, so although yes you are very possibly correct, it is also possible that this reference is also correct, but maybe not specific enough.

Maybe, but it seems a massive coincidence to me that my dds start their periods within a day or two of each other every month despite the fact that they started their period at different ages, at different times of the month, and aren't biologically related to each other. They all start on around 12/13 each month which coincidencely is the same time of the month i always got mine until they stopped.(none of them are on the pill btw)

No your reference is 1986 pulp fiction. Why would women in China invent a lunar calendar 3,000 yrs ago when there’d already been a much more accurate lunisolar calendar in existence for two thousand years? Lunar calendars are a feature of prehistory not history. As in 10,000 BCE and earlier.

The pagan religions were definitely less patriarchal than christianity, polytheistic being god and goddess woship, no? When you live with nature and worship nature you see that it is a divine balance. I am not suggesting they were 'matriarchal' but that christianity was a patriarchal takeover. Are you trying to tell me that christianity is not patriarchal?

The huts are not big enough for that many girls/women to sleep in, and ethnographers have interviewed the girls/women who have confirmed this. It stands to reason that if cultures with more natural lifestyles did have this woo of period synching, then each village would have built a menstruation big house and not a teeny tiny menstruation hut.

No, I’m trying to tell you that patriarchy predates Christianity and is completely separate from Christianity. That your example of the number 13 being unlucky is due to “patriarchy” is completely wrong because when and where it was/is lucky, there is/was still patriarchy. And often a more patriarchal religion and society than what was in the Christian religion.

Greeks- 13 is lucky….more patriarchal than Christianity
Hindus- 13 is lucky…more patriarchal than Christianity
Jewish- 13 is lucky…more patriarchal than Christianity

And it’s romantic nonsense that if you “live with nature and worship nature you see that it is a divine balance” as most ancient religions are based on nature but still had gods supreme over goddesses.

The wording is exactly - '' Chinese women established a lunar calendar 3000 years ago, dividing the celestial sphere into 28 stella mansions through which the moon passed'' this is within long paragraph about all the various ancient calendars from around the world.

Having tried to look this up I find nothing. Having tried to look up who invented the chinese lunar calendar, it comes up with varying dates, some from this age, some older, it says it is a ''myth'' that the calendar was invented by Emperor Huangdi'. I suppose its easier to believe the myth of male invention, than female invention.

Unless you have some better information/evidence than what I can find?

There have been scientific studies on menstrual synching, which say that no, it doesn't happen. What's normally observed by people as such is just normal variation where menstrual cycles align, just like other cycles will align at various times.

But this idea that pagan religions were all, or even mostly, peaceful and goddess focused is equally a myth. Nor were they all pro "13" while Christianity was uniquely anti-13.

You don't have to look far into various non-Christian or pagan religions to see that many were incredibly bloody and cruel. Not only to humans, but to animals. And to women, in many cases.