Why is it believed that the New Year begins on January 1? Imagine that radio, television, and the Internet have disappeared. How in this case do you know that the New Year is coming? And can you even find out? Or not? It turns out you can.
PLACE WHERE TIME STOPS
Far away on the island of Ireland, in County Meath, on the banks of the Boyne River, there is an unusual mound called Shi-en-Vroo in Irish and Newgrange in English. It is quite low, only 12 meters, but very ancient - 500 years older than the Egyptian pyramids! (The oldest pyramid was built in 2670 BC, and this mound was built around 3200 BC.)
Shi-an-Vruh Hill (Newgrange).
According to Irish myths, this mound was the home of the earth god Dagda. His youngest son Angus, the god of youth and love, asked his father to give him the Shi-an-Vru mound "for just one day and one night," and Dagda agreed. But the cunning Angus chose for himself the day and night of the Samhain holiday, when, according to Irish beliefs, time stops, after which he said that now he became the owner of the mound forever …
MIRACLE OF THE WORLD
Promotional video:
But let's return from legends to a real mound. A long narrow passage, lined with stone, leads inside, at the end of which there is a burial chamber. It is dark all year round, but at the end of December every year something wonderful and wonderful happens.
Exactly at noon, the rays of the sun pass through a small window above the entrance to the tunnel and illuminate the camera inside the mound. This phenomenon can be observed for only 15 minutes, and only for five days - on the sixth day at noon, the sun's rays no longer reach the central chamber. The spectacle when the sun's rays pierce the dusty air of the corridor and the ancient tomb seems to be on fire from the inside is simply enchanting.
It is no coincidence that you can get into this chamber only by winning a special lottery - every year only 20 out of thousands of people choose! Because the camera is very small, and the phenomenon, despite all its beauty, ends very quickly …
This is how the Irish knew how to determine the beginning of a new year by the sun 5,000 years ago.
THE SUN RUNS IN A CIRCLE
"So the New Year's holiday is determined by the sun?" - you ask. Yes, that's right.
Every autumn it starts to sink lower and lower. It gets colder and colder, winter comes, and at some point it seems that soon the sun can completely leave the sky and leave the world of people forever. But every year comes the day when the downward movement of the sun miraculously stops! And then, after five days, the sun begins to rise again - the days begin to lengthen, the nights to shorten, which means that sooner or later people will return to warmth, the snow will melt, it will be possible to sow grain and bring livestock to pastures.
ANALEMMA
Why does the sun illuminate the central chamber of Shi-an-Vru only five days a year - exactly at noon, and no more than 15 minutes?
If we take a camera and every day exactly at noon we take pictures of the sun above the horizon, and a year later we put all our photos into one picture, we will see that the sun, as it were, draws an unusual figure in the sky, similar to an elongated number 8. This figure is called “analemma ", which in Greek means" base ".
If we accurately determine for a given area where the lowest point of the analemma is, we can repeat the achievement of ancient architects. It is enough to move strictly to the south at exactly the angle at which the lowest point of the analemma rises above the horizon - and then, strictly on a certain day at noon, the sun's rays will pierce our tunnel and illuminate the room inside.
Ancient astronomers knew very well about the existence of the analemma and knew how to use it in various calculations - for example, to determine the time of sunrise and sunset on a particular day of the year. But the most important day, of course, was the day in winter, on which the downward movement of the sun stops - that's why this phenomenon is called: the winter solstice.
The internal structure of Shi-an-Vru.
The Shi-an-Vru burial chamber is illuminated by the rays of the sun at noon for five days: December 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23. On December 24, the solstice ends, and the sun begins to move upward, "towards spring." This day was one of the most important holidays for almost all peoples of the Northern Hemisphere.
NEW YEAR'S INFINITY
"Why don't we celebrate the New Year on December 24 or 25?" - you ask. The fact is that over hundreds and thousands of years, the position of the Earth relative to the Sun is slowly changing. Now the winter solstice is "behind" by 10 days and falls on December 21 or 22, but about 500 years ago, according to the then Julian calendar, it fell … just on January 1!
John Wallis (1616-1703).
The elongated eight of the analemma for astronomers and mathematicians has always been a symbol of the invariability of the path of the sun in the sky and its annual return. When the English mathematician John Wallis first came up with such a complex mathematical concept as infinity, he chose the analemma to denote it - he only "laid" it horizontally. And today all scientists of the world use this symbol to designate infinity!