Quote:
Originally Posted by Slice of Life
A moon cycle is about 29.5 days. You want to divide it somehow into smaller units, (rounded to a day). So the question is why not 3 x 10 days or 5 x 6 days. Which moon phases can be easily identified? Full moon, half moon, new moon. half moon, full moon, ... So you divide the lunar month into 4 quarters.
But while the seven days week seems to have been popular, other "weeks" were also in use in some cultures.
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In addition in ancient times, people knew of seven wanderers in the sky ("planets") they could see. These were associated with gods and it was serendipitous that it roughly 4x matched the "28" day moon cycle (and we'll stick some festival holidays in to round it up so it matches the solar year). People love it when the numbers all seem to coincide, even when they have to use a hammer to make it actually work