Lunar Calander

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Ancient Calendars: All ancient calendars were lunar calendars. The practice of starting a month
at the first sighting of a new moon was observed not only by Romans but by Celts and Germans in
Europe and by Babylonians and Hebrews in the Lavant. The new moons were sighted after either
29 or 30 days. If clouds obscured vision on the 29th day, that month was declared to have 30
days. This is still done for the Islamic Calendar.

When human civilization excelled in agriculture, there was a need for having a calendar that
repeats the seasons so that it would help sowing and harvesting on repeated calendar dates. This
calendar was established based on rotation of the earth around the sun. Early estimates of this
rotation was 360 days, so the first solar calendar was invented having 12 months of 30 days each.
Some civilizations invented a lunisolar calendar which basically had lunar months based on new
crescent moons but were adding days or a month to be decided by priests/rabiis wherever and
whenever they felt to satisfy social and religious needs to keep their calendar in phase with
seasons. This practice of adding days or a 13th month was called "Intercalation".

Babylonian Calendar: Around 1800 B.C. Babylonians were using strictly lunar calendar based
on the visible new crescent but somewhere between 1100 B.C and 800 B.C. a lunisolar calendar
was adopted using intercalation which was haphazard. Some sources report that during the reign
of the Babylonian king Nebuchadenezzar II (630 B.C. - 562 B.C.) priest/experts discontinued
their practice of looking for the new moon and adopted a 365 day calendar of 12 months of 30
days each, with five days added at the end of the year.

Hindu Calendar: Hindus have both solar and lunisolar calendars. In the Hindu solar calendar
month is 30 or 31 days and begins on the day of first sunrise after the calculated time of the mean
sun's entry into the next zodiacal sign. If the calc...