What if we told you there was a fashion to go back to the year 2016 , before all [ gestures vaguely at the past seven years]thishappened ? You could just hop on a plane and find yourself in 2016 , quick to discourage the world about something frightening , like COVID or Elon Musk ’s Twitter accomplishment .
Well , you’re able to . Sort of . Of of course move around to Ethiopia will not really send off youback in time , but it is fairly interesting that the country is currently get going through the year 2016 .
The calendar the world largely uses today – the Gregorian – has not been received eternally . In 1582 , Pope Gregory XIII introduced theGregorian calendar . Prior to this , most of the papist macrocosm and Europe had used the Julian calendar , introduce by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE .
The Julian was slimly out of sync with the Earth ’s orbit around the Sun , and as a result the literal equinoctial point ( and other events of religious grandness ) weredrifting awayfrom the equinox on the calendar . This made Easter even more unmanageable to forecast , involve the transposition . The changeover was not easy , spanning hundreds of years and necessitate countries to lose between10 and 13 days .
Though most countries in the world now apply the Gregorian calendar , there are a few that use other ways of separate the year . In Ethiopia , there are13 month – Meskerem , Tikimt , Hidar , Tahsas , Tir , Yakatit , Maggabit , Myazya , Ginbot , Sene , Hamle , Nehasa , and Pagume . Rather than have a hodgepodge of months with 30 solar day , 31 days , and 28 or 29 day depend on the year , the Ethiopian calendar has 12 month with 30 day each , follow by a final month which has five or six day , depending on whether it ’s a leap year .
To make system even more unmanageable with visitors , thetime of dayis not the same either , being separate into two 12 - hour halves that begin at 6:00 am rather than midnight .
But why is it 2016 in Ethiopia ? Does n’t that seem weirdly close to our own year to be a happenstance ? The result goes back to 500 CE .
Just like the Gregorian calendar , the Ethiopian calendar is establish around the nascence of Jesus . In 500 CE , the Catholic Church changed its calculations of when Jesus was born , but the Ethiopian Christian church did not , and as an extra side bonus this places their fresh twelvemonth on the Gregorian September 11 . Ethiopia – the only country in Africa that was never colonized – proceed to use the older computing ( themselves ratherarbitrary ) and as a result is living in 2016 , and has n’t even depart through Brexit yet .
