Time

Strange to think that once upon a time, time was divided only into day and night. One cave guy would ask “Hey, Og! What time you got?” and the other cave guy would stick his head out of the cave and answer, “It day, Bonehead.” Other times were flexible, such as dinnertime. Dinnertime was whenever you managed to kill some critter before it could kill you.

After an eon or two Og and Bonehead began to notice that sometimes there was a long stretch of cold weather and food would be scarce and at other times it would be hot and food was just everywhere. In the cold times the cave persons would wonder where the food went so it was called “Winter”. (Cave guys weren’t known for their spelling skills.) In the hot times they would remark, “Here’s some strawberries” or “Hey, there’s some rutabagas” so that became known as “Summer”. The cave dudes only recognized two seasons because they only knew two numbers, which they called “this many” and “that many”. This was called a base two system, which is still used in countries too poor for enough bases to play baseball.

Many more eons went by. The cave people somehow became Ancient Egyptians and decided to build the Pyramids and thus would need more than two numbers. When the cave people decided to become Ancient Egyptians they knew they would have to move to the Nile River. I don’t know how they knew but they did. They noticed that the Nile flooded just as the “summer” was about to start and the “winter” was over. They called this period a “year”, as in “Year comes them floods again.” (It was bad puns as much as anything that brought down the Ancient Egyptian Empire. They no longer speak of that particular plague.)

The Ancient Egyptians came up with a numerical system based on their gods. This occurred in the year Birdhead Snake Jackal Jackal at about Osiris o’clock. By this time Og and Bonehead had decided to change their names to proper Ancient Egyptian names. Og became Tut-Ankh–Set. Bonehead became Tut-Ankh-Ptah, but insisted that everyone call him “Bucky”. Since they had moved up in the world they had more leisure time, which they divided into “hours”, as in “This leisure time is ‘hours’, so go away”.

At any rate the Pyramids got built. Originally the Pyramids were a timekeeping device, but somebody (and I’m not naming any names, but it rhymes with “Yucky”) forgot to tell anybody else how to read the dang thing and there you go. After “Rhymes With Yucky” lost the instructions, the Pharoah died so they stuck him in there with his Mummy and Daddy, who were named Mr. and Mrs. Pharoah, but everybody called them Ed and Louise, although those were not their real names. No one knows why. That is just one more reason that Ancient Egypt was known as the “Land of Mystery”.

More eons went by. Ancient Egypt was up to its asp in eons. That is when The Cavemen Formerly Known As Og And Bonehead roamed northward to become Romans. The Romans used letters for their numbers:
M=1,000
D=500
C=100
L=50
X=10
V=5
I=1

Pretty simple, huh? Right. Here’s how it works. If you want to indicate the number two just add I+I=II. Now II+I=III. III+I should equal IIII, right? Nope. To signify “four” you have to subtract one from five, thusly: II+II=IV. Six is V+I=VI. Nine is IX, eleven is XI, ninety-nine is either LXXXXIX or IC, I think, and so forth until your brain starts to bleed.
For instance the year 2008 in Roman numerals is MMVIII. The year 1976 is MCMLXXVI. 1,000.000 is MMMMMMMMMM and so on until you have 1,000 (or M) M’s. One could also write 1,000,000 as M with a line under it, but that fell out of favor and couldn’t get up. .

The Romans were superb engineers and built many ruins, such as the Coliseum and Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V or some such number).. How were they able to accomplish these amazing engineering feats with such a complicated and confusing numerical system? Easy. They conquered other countries and used their numbers. Once a country was conquered it stayed conqued because the Romans had taken all their numbers in tribute (a Latin word meaning “stolen loot”).

The Romans proceeded to invent the “minute” because all those tribute numbers were stacking up like pancakes and they had to do something with them. They put 60 minutes in each hour because they knew it would look good on clocks when somebody got around to inventing them.

The Cavemen Formerly Known as Og and Bonehead went on to invent Capitalism. They were trying to invent Communism but forgot to carry the one. Karl Marx got a copy of their flawed manifesto, corrected it, and became known as the Father of the Marx Brothers. Og and Bonehead survived until the present day and are now doing television commercials for a major insurance company.

Well, that’s about all the time I have for now. I’ll write more on the subject in a future installment that I have tentatively titled, ”Daylight Saving Time or What Were They Smoking When They Came Up With That?” If you have any historical type questions for The Jester just click in the Contact icon. (Note: I am not responsible, generally speaking.)