Equestrian Calendar

[ProjectRKA 2,840]

exactly.

 

Indeedy.jpg

[Jibbs93 64]

I had originally posted this in the 'How old?' thread, but I suppose this theory has more to do with the equestrian calendar rather than age.

 

I'm not sure of age exactly, but I think that the Equestrian calendar is the same as ours in terms of length. And the date on which the episode lands in the day it is in Equestria.

 

My reasoning behind this is due to a line that I heard Pinkie say in 'A Friend in Deed'. She says to Cranky, 'My birthday isn't for another 72 days, silly'. Now, this episode aired on the 18th February. Count on 72 days and you get... the 29th April. And what episode aired on that day last year? 'Party of One', and we all know whose birthday is featured in this episode.

 

So, if we're saying that the ponies' birthdays fall on the calendar date of the original airing of the episode that their birthday was featured in, then we have two birthdays to add to our calendars.

 

Pinkie Pie: 29th April

Twilight Sparkle: 3rd December

 

Just an observation. This tells us nothing about the precise age, but at least we know when to celebrate their birthdays! XD

[Marcusaralius76 150]

Knowing her, it's probably written in some incredibly intricate way that she finds useful, but would have no use to people like us. I bet Pinkie Pie would go insane-er if she tried to follow it.

[Sean Skyhawk 12]

Hmmm this discussion is very interesting... in any case, I have a somewhat different question:

 

I've been skimming through topics detailing different calendar systems used by humans, especially the intricate Mayan calendar which I use in my diary headers (e.g. the time/date now is 1657hEDT 5/7/2012 12.19.19.9.11 4-Chuen 14-Sek Lord 2), the Julian calendar which is not really that much better than the standard Gregorian system and a recent creation: the Dreamspell calendar by José Argüelles (interesting twist, using 13X28 + 1 as the system as opposed to the standard ~12X30 used in modern times and the 18X20+5 in the Mayan Haab`).

 

All that aside, I've often wondered how ponies would denote the calendar systems. Recall that if Equestria is anything like our world, they'll probably have demarcations for year (one solar cycle), month (one lunar phase cycle), and day (sunrise to sunset). Of course, their year times are most likely to be different - i.e. that they probably don't have 365 days in their year and/or 12 lunations per said year. However, that is not a topic I wish to complicate this discussion with.

 

My main point is that I've seen three variants, excluding the Mesoamerican Long Count which is really more or less a mostly-vigesimal tally independent of any astronomical cycles, or the Maya tzolk'in which is used primarily for astrological purposes. They are:

• Solar: The dates indicate the position of the earth on its revolution around the sun (or equivalently the apparent position of the sun moving on the celestial sphere, more likely for the MLP verse).
• Lunar: The dates are purely based on lunar cycles. An example is the Islamic calendar, or the Hijri Qamari calendar. Note: A feature of the Islamic calendar is that a year is always 12 months, so the months are not linked with the seasons and drift each solar year by 11 to 12 days.
• Lunisolar: Subtly different from a lunar calendar. The date indicates both the moon phase and the time of the solar year. If the solar year is defined as a tropical year, then a lunisolar calendar will give an indication of the season; if it is taken as a sidereal year, then the calendar will predict the constellation near which the full moon may occur. Usually there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months, in which case most years have 12 months but every second or third year has 13. Examples include most "lunar" calendars such as the Chinese calendar (Year of the Dragon anyone?)

The last one is quite a mouthful and even I have trouble understanding it, so let me try to explain: Essentially we have a lunar calendar in which each month starts on the new moon, but every two or so years an extra 13th month is used to cover the difference. Otherwise, Winter Wrap up will be way off, for instance.

 

In searching around the forums (just in case anyone has beaten me to the idea), I was trying to find a way to come up with a novel calendrical system that would be of the variety used in the MLPverse. Obviously since we have two princesses rather than one, I figured that the lunar and solar cycles would be given equal respect, unlike what we humans have in the Gregorian system. So I thought of trying to use a lunisolar system, but how to pull it off?

 

One strategy I thought would have been to line up separate solar/lunar calendars such that though both increment simultaneously, they are considered completely separate and neither indicates the position of the others' celestial body (e.g. the solar part tells nothing about the moon's current phase). That's probably a bit cheap, though.

 

Another one I imagined was similar to the Jewish system. Though, obviously, days begin at sunrise not sundown or midnight, I suspected that the years are also incremented through an Anno Mundi system, that is, the number of years since creation. But that's beside the point... In any case, if you were to follow the link, you'll soon see why I thought it extravagantly complex, maybe too much so for the MLPverse (especially when you consider they have festivities for the solstices and equinoxes).

 

I'll still be working on it, but I wanted to ask how you thought it would work, and also how a human could adapt it to his own planetary cycles? Perhaps this could start our own separate "brony calendar system" to determine when the next BroNYcon should be held I dunno

[Plutonian Shore 5]

Couldn't it be possible, nay, probable that Twilight Sparkle is anal enough to keep her planner divided into hourly slots instead of daily slots? So  each blank spot on the page is what she has planned for that hour not that day?

[Pastel 7,627]

Couldn't it be possible, nay, probable that Twilight Sparkle is anal enough to keep her planner divided into hourly slots instead of daily slots? So  each blank spot on the page is what she has planned for that hour not that day?

That actually makes sense!

[sweetolebob18 724]

Solar calendars are really only important once you start agriculture -you need to know when to plant stuff so that it will be ready to harvest before it freezes.  Keeping track of the moon is more important for sailors because of tides. 

 

I've seen some accounts that Stonehenge was supposed to be used as a lunar/solar calendar converter.  Seems a lot of trouble to go to when you could just cut notches on sticks.

[Amixime 0]

Celestia is more powerful than she lets everypony know. In the last episode of season 3 where she makes Twilight an alicorn she creates like a new dimension or something where she takes Twilight, and Luna can control the entire dream realm. I'm pretty sure they are both some sort of deities or something.

[CameoShadowness 251]

On 10/19/2011 at 11:37 AM, Broniesinarms said:

in the picture below, you can see a full page of twilight's calander/planner. You will also see that each page only has 24 spaces on it (in a 6 x 4 grid)

 

 

 

All the pages in the book are the same design, so does that mean the equestrian calander is made up of

17 months of 24 days length each?

Who said a single page was a single month? I believe that it takes two pages and there are simply extra spaces for cepcial notes.