Ask HN: Did lunar calendars cause right-to-left writing systems?

3 points by ykler 8 years ago | 4 comments

I am not an expert and may be off-base here. But I believe that Chinese and Semitic writing systems are right-to-left (in the Chinese case, up-to-down first) and that these cultures used predominantly lunar calendars. Meanwhile, Western and Mayan writing systems are left-to-right, and these cultures used predominantly solar calendars. The moon waxes from right to left. Is it possible that calendar systems influenced writing direction?

eesmith 8 years ago |

The Persian calendar is a solar calendar. Persian is a right-to-left language. (Both the older Pahlevi form and the modern Arabic-derived one.)

The Chinese calendar is, technically speaking, a lunisolar calendar. The Hindu and Thai calendars are also lunisolar. Thai is right-to-left.

There does not appear to be a correlation.

ykler 8 years ago | |

Obviously most writing systems are derived from older systems, so I tried to only list systems that might have independent origins (although both the Semitic and Western systems come from an area that had writing for a long time, so it is questionable). Old Persian cuneiform was left-to-right (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Persian_cuneiform), while the Pahlavi and modern Persian writing systems have a common origin with Hebrew and Arabic (i.e., Semitic).

Thai (at least today) is left-to-right, but anyway Thai is highly irrelevant since it is derived from Indian writing systems and probably ultimately from Semitic ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script).

Old Persian: left-to-right. Calendar: solar. Sumerian: left-to-right. Calendar: lunisolar. Egyptian: left-to-right. Calendar: solar. Chinese: right-to-left. Calendar: lunisolar.

So, anyway, so far the evidence is not strong at all (and I wasn't saying it is), but I'm not yet convinced there was definitely no influence.

eesmith 8 years ago | | |

As you can tell, I didn't research the history that far back. Thanks for the corrections.

Looking now into the history of the Chinese calendar, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calendars#China says:

> Before the Spring and Autumn period (before 770 BC), the Chinese Calendars were solar calendars. In the so-called five-phase calendar, the year consists of 10 months and a transition, each month being 36 days long, and the transitions 5 or 6 days. During the Warring States period (~475-220 BC), the primitive lunisolar calendars were established under the Zhou Dynasty,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar#Earlier_Chine... elaborates:

> Before the Zhou dynasty, the Chinese calendars used a solar calendar.

> According to Ancient Chinese literature, the first version was the five-phases calendar (traditional Chinese: 五行曆; simplified Chinese: 五行历), which came from the tying knots culture. ... The second version is the four-seasons calendar ... The third version is the balanced calendar ..

> In Zhou dynasty, the authority issued the official calendar, which is a primitive lunisolar calendar.

The Shang dynasty came before the Zhou dynasty, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script says that "The vertical columns of text in Chinese writing are traditionally ordered from right to left; this pattern is found on bronze inscriptions from the Shang dynasty onward."

This would seem to mean that the Chinese calendar had a right-to-left writing system and a solar calendar, before switching to a solilunar calendar, yes?

Does that not invalidate your thesis?

In any case, I don't see why there should be any connection. If there are only a few data points, then it's very easy to get coincidental correlations.

What difference does it make?