Why do we have 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute?
This may be an easy question to ask, but a quick search online will show that nobody really has a definitive answer. The first documented evidence of a 24 hour system being used was by the ancient Egyptians. We are told that they divided the day and night into 12 hours each, so the length of each hour could differ from season to season. The established view is that it was the ancient Greeks, needing a more accurate system for their theoretical calculations, who went on to divide the day into 24 equal parts, dividing each of these again into 60 minutes.
It is not until around 1000 AD that the Persian Muslim mathematician Al-Biruni first uses the term 'second' as a measurement of time. He defines it as being 1/86400th of a solar day. This may be the first time that this concept was documented, but it does not mean that he invented it.
believe that our system of timekeeping could be vastly older than previously imagined. Perhaps even dating back to the lost pre-flood civilization I am convinced once flourished on our planet. This is a bold claim, one which I will now try to explain in simple terms.
Last year, while working in a factory in Ireland, I accidentally stumbled across something crazy. My job involved filling a machine and waiting for it to run, so I had a lot of time to sit and think. One day I was sat playing around with some ideas in a notebook. I was looking for the digital root of everyday numbers, particularly for numbers with the digital root of 3, 6 or 9.
“If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe.” -Nicola Tesla-
For those of you who don't already know; the digital root is the single digit to which long numbers break down via the addition of all the digits. For example:
21,567 = 2+1+5+6+7 = 21 2+1 = 3
So the digital root of 21,567 is 3. The digital root makes it easy for us to recognize certain patterns and can also tell us a lot about the number itself.
But what does this have to do with our system of timekeeping? Don't worry I'll be getting to that in a moment. First we have to understand that a clock face is a circle. Okay, sounds obvious, so lets take a closer look at circles. We all know from school that a circle has 360 degrees, but where does this come from? Once again this has very ancient and mysterious origins. We are told that the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia were the first people to break the circle into 360 equal parts at around 3000 BC. The Sumerians are also said to be the first true civilization on earth. The first to invent writing, astronomy and higher mathematics. They also had excellent engineering skills, well developed agriculture and knowledge of the wheel. In fact they had everything, just popping up out of nowhere. So where did this knowledge come from? Surely it must have developed over thousands of years but where is the evidence for this? This question has led to the popular theory that the first civilizations were visited and guided by extra-terrestrial 'gods' who passed their knowledge onto them. I believe it makes much more sense to accept that Mesopotamia was not the birthplace of civilization at all and that this knowledge was inherited by a much older culture.
In the ancient Sanskrit texts of India, the Vedas, we find the evidence for this inheritance. We are lead to believe that the oldest of these texts, the Rig veda, was composed no earlier than 2000 BC. This is however an oral tradition of teaching which still exists in its non-written form to this day. There are verses in the Rig veda which describe geographical characteristics of India at the end of the last ice age, not 4000 years ago. We can then assume that this oral tradition could stretch back much further into antiquity than its written counterpart. There are many insightful myths and stories in the Rig veda, including the tale of a global flood and cataclysm that we find in so many cultures. There is also a verse which mentions dividing a circle into 360 parts.
Twelve spokes, one wheel, navels three.
Who can comprehend this?
On it are placed together three hundred and sixty like pegs. They shake not in the least. — Dirghatamas , Rigveda 1.164.48
If we draw regular polygons inside a circle and then calculate the sum of interior angles then the resulting number will always have a digital root of 9.
When we bisect a circle we get the same pattern; 180°, 90°, 45°, 22.5°, 11.25°, 5.625°, 2.8125°, etc. The resulting angle always has a digital root of 9. This shows that breaking up a circle into 360 parts was not done on a random whim, but with a very high level of mathematical understanding. As we will see this 360° system is so intertwined with the way we break up the day into hours, minutes and seconds, in my mind it cannot possibly be a coincidence.
So now we can make our 24 hour clock by dividing a circle by four, then each segment by three and then each segment by 2 (4+3+2=9). This gives us 24 equal segments, each consisting of 15 degrees.
Now we can add in the number of degrees for each significant segment and then calculate the digital root for each number. A pattern soon begins to emerge: 9, 6, 3, 9, 6, 3...
If we were to divide each segment in half the pattern still remains. For example, 15/2 = 7.5 7 + 5 = 12 1 + 2 = 3 so now the pattern would read: 9, 3, 6, 9, 3, 6... We can do this again: 7.5/2 = 3.75 3 +7 + 5 = 15 1 +5 = 6 so now again: 9, 6, 3, 9, 6, 3... You get the picture.
Now let's add in the number of minutes which have passed by each hour or every 15° on our circle. We find that the digital root of the number of minutes corresponds to the digital root for the number of degrees.
Now for the craziest part. We draw our clock and add in the number of seconds which have passed by each significant hourly marker. Then we calculate the digital roots for each number and there it is; the nine in the center of the vortex. Every number breaks down to the digital root of 9.
I believe that this is the real reason we have 24 hours, 1440 minutes and 86400 seconds in a day. This was not an invention; it was a discovery. It is interesting to note that a healthy human heart beats at around 60 beats per minute. Now, due to unhealthy lifestyle being the norm, the average heart beats at about 80 bpm. Could it be that our ancestors all lived in a balance with the natural heartbeat of this system? That they were somehow tuned into it? I could continue on this subject but i'm saving it for another post. There is much more we can discover with this system, linking the knowledge of these numbers with ancient measurements and even with the orbits of the planets in our solar-system. The rabbit hole is about to get a lot deeper, so stay tuned...