The upcoming Mooncake Festival has me thinking about lunar calendars again.
All civilizations eventual commit to either the solar calendar (where the revolution of the Earth around the sun is primal and the Moonths just fit in as they can) or the lunar calendar (where 'years' are always a integer number of lunar revolutions (usually 12 or 13)). Since the Chinese and Islamic holidays are on a lunar schedule they do not occur at the same point every year on the solar calendar. The Chinese calendar cheats with intercalary days to keep it relatively even with the solar year. Of course if I'm going to call that cheating then we have to call leap years and leap seconds (added to solar calendars to keep the 24 hour day in line with the solar year) cheating too!
This is all beside the point - what is on my mind is writing language right to left versus left to right. It seems like there is a correlation between lunar calendar cultures and writing right to left versus solar calendar countries writing left to right. My cursory research reveals no definitive answer why some cultures settled into left to right versus right to left. I am fairly positive there is no real correlation with writing and the calendar choice but I want there to be one so I post this anyway...
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