Above Our Heads

[00:00] All right, team.
[00:01] Did you?
[00:01] I'm sorry.
[00:02] Oh.
[00:02] Oh.
[00:09] Go ahead.
[00:10] Get it out of your system.
[00:22] Ooh.
[00:23] We doing under Googles?
[00:24] That was the play of.
[00:26] Super excited.
[00:27] Told us we had to, sir.
[00:28] So it was, you said we signed up for it.
[00:34] In the end, it's going to be better and more true
[00:36] than Google can give you.
[00:39] All right, team.
[00:40] It is time to do another undegigable.
[00:46] I really just wanted to interrupt you.
[00:49] I was thinking if I should, too.
[00:55] Coalson, what do you have for us this week?
[00:58] So this one has been bothering me for a while.
[01:04] And it's probably too large a question for just one show.
[01:12] Maybe just too large a question for just the three of us.
[01:16] But two of my smartest friends, I feel like maybe we can do this.
[01:23] Where do we get the days of the week?
[01:28] Like the names?
[01:29] Yeah, so there's seven of them.
[01:30] Why is there seven of them?
[01:32] And then also, why do we name them what we name them?
[01:36] They're Roman or Greek, right?
[01:37] But what are they after?
[01:38] Like, what do we name them from?
[01:40] When did they get named?
[01:41] It was all the Greeks and the Romans, I think.
[01:43] But what do they stand for, I guess, is what I'm looking for?
[01:46] A little bit of history.
[01:49] Monday is like moon day, right?
[01:51] And like, Sunday is Sunday.
[01:54] And then Saturday is for Saturn, right?
[01:59] Potentially.
[02:00] And that's all I know.
[02:02] So I'm trying to think of my grade school Spanish.
[02:09] So yeah, Luna is moon, so that makes sense.
[02:14] Martes, maybe, is for Mars.
[02:17] Yeah, OK, I like that.
[02:19] Miracles, no idea.
[02:22] Mercury.
[02:23] OK, there you go.
[02:24] Huevés.
[02:28] Isn't that eggs?
[02:29] Yeah, it's huevos.
[02:32] Huevos rancheros.
[02:33] Viernes.
[02:34] Is it Viernes?
[02:35] Sabado?
[02:37] Yeah.
[02:37] Sabado is.
[02:38] Domingo.
[02:39] Domingo is Sunday.
[02:40] But that's for the Lord, the day of the Lord, or whatever.
[02:45] The dominoes, yeah.
[02:47] Yeah, so I don't know.
[02:49] When did?
[02:51] So were the Greeks on a seven day a week calendar?
[03:00] Well, this is my question.
[03:02] Yeah.
[03:02] I mean, did the Romans set this up?
[03:07] Because I feel like they set up a bunch of stuff, right?
[03:09] It's like the Roman calendar.
[03:14] Yeah.
[03:15] Well, so like Thursday's.
[03:18] Julian calendar.
[03:19] We talked about this before with the months and whatnot.
[03:21] Yeah.
[03:22] But so Thursday is for Thor, right?
[03:24] And Friday is like a Frigga.
[03:28] Frigga, right?
[03:28] Yeah, that's Thor's mom, at least from Marvel.
[03:31] I don't know if that's true or not in real life.
[03:35] OK, I like this.
[03:36] So you're saying Thursday is for Thor?
[03:40] I believe so, yeah.
[03:40] Oh, man, Thursday just became my new favorite day.
[03:43] That's awesome.
[03:45] It's Thor's day.
[03:46] And it's thirsty.
[03:48] And it's thirsty.
[03:48] It's thirsty Thor's day.
[03:49] Drink up.
[03:53] You guys are creating a monster is what you're doing.
[03:58] I mean, I had always thought that, yeah, so I can't remember.
[04:01] So yeah, I don't remember what Tuesday and Wednesday.
[04:06] Well, so if Jason's right, if we look at the Spanish
[04:09] and it gives us some, so Merca days is Tuesday, right?
[04:13] Which would be Mercury.
[04:15] Yeah, but that doesn't explain why in English it's Wednesday.
[04:19] Like, I was just trying to get at what,
[04:21] like your theme of maybe in the original.
[04:25] So Spanish comes from Latin, right, ultimately.
[04:29] And so maybe that's where the Latin Roman
[04:32] or whatever naming convention came from.
[04:34] I think you're really smart on that.
[04:35] Everything got mutated when you moved to English, right?
[04:42] So why would, yeah, exactly.
[04:43] Some things it seemed got conserved,
[04:47] like Monday and moon day, maybe it makes sense, I guess.
[04:52] And Domingo becoming Sunday doesn't quite make sense
[04:55] because if like.
[04:59] That's right.
[05:00] So maybe it's that was like from a pagan thing
[05:02] or something like that, like Monday and Sunday.
[05:06] But like, so was it, Annie Domino is AD, right?
[05:10] It's.
[05:11] Yep.
[05:13] The year of our Lord.
[05:14] Right.
[05:15] So maybe, I mean, I guess the sun could get caught up
[05:19] with the Lord stuff, but like that doesn't seem,
[05:21] why isn't Sunday the Lord's day?
[05:23] I mean, I guess it is the Lord's day,
[05:25] but we don't call it the Lord's day.
[05:29] Why isn't Sunday Lord's day Domingo?
[05:34] I mean, it could be Sunday, right?
[05:36] Because in like Judaism and whatnot,
[05:43] like the Sabbath is Saturday, it's not Sunday.
[05:45] Right.
[05:46] So to distinguish Christians, you could imagine
[05:49] if they wanted to distinguish themselves from Jews,
[05:51] then they would create a different day of rest.
[05:55] What about like the.
[05:56] In honor of the sun.
[05:58] Of Christ, the sun Christ.
[06:01] Right.
[06:02] Okay, okay.
[06:03] All right.
[06:04] But it's even spelled, I mean, it's S-U-S.
[06:06] I know.
[06:07] Well, sure.
[06:08] All these things get.
[06:10] Maybe there's the peas and pagans.
[06:12] Right, exactly.
[06:13] Well, okay, so Joey, do you really,
[06:16] were you kidding me on Thor's day?
[06:18] And Frinka is Friday.
[06:19] So legit, so Thursday and Friday, I think.
[06:22] Okay, what's his dad's name?
[06:25] Zeus, no.
[06:27] No, no, no.
[06:27] Oh, Thor is Odin.
[06:29] Odin.
[06:30] Odin, could that be Wednesday?
[06:34] Odin's day?
[06:35] Oh.
[06:36] Odin's day?
[06:37] Maybe.
[06:38] Yeah, maybe that's why Wednesday is spelled so stupid.
[06:41] Wednesday, yeah.
[06:45] I don't know.
[06:46] Potentially, yeah.
[06:48] I liked it.
[06:49] I didn't know that.
[06:50] Tuesday, I still think it's Mercury.
[06:52] I like your idea.
[06:54] Because Mercury was a god, right?
[06:57] Yeah, but that doesn't attract to English.
[06:59] Yeah, Martes is in Spanish is Tuesday.
[07:04] So.
[07:05] Oh, America Day is Wednesday.
[07:06] You're right.
[07:07] Yeah, but yeah, that's just like way off from Tuesday.
[07:10] Maybe it's because it's the second day of the week.
[07:12] It's the Tuesday.
[07:13] The Tuesday, yeah.
[07:16] But if it's coming from the Latin,
[07:18] it's maybe about Mars, who's also a god, right?
[07:23] Maybe.
[07:24] Right, but I mean, we're trying to figure out the English.
[07:25] Why is it?
[07:26] No, I know.
[07:27] I'm just trying to figure out how we got to where we got.
[07:29] True.
[07:30] All those things.
[07:32] I mean, I guess it's Martes, so it could be,
[07:35] they just took the back half of the word.
[07:37] Martes.
[07:38] Tuesday.
[07:39] Martes Day.
[07:40] Martes Day.
[07:41] And then it just got shortened to Tuesday, I don't know.
[07:43] Okay, I like that.
[07:46] Okay, so.
[07:47] Because we've got a conglomeration of like
[07:50] multiple languages, cultures,
[07:54] spellings.
[07:55] Religions.
[07:56] All kinds of stuff going on, yeah.
[07:57] Yeah, and somehow it was agreed upon to just make it work.
[08:04] And we think that these days of the week in English
[08:08] go back to like old English, like middle ages.
[08:13] They were rocking.
[08:14] Oh, yes.
[08:15] Seven day a week, and it was Monday.
[08:15] For sure.
[08:16] Because in Rome, it was that.
[08:19] So we're transferring
[08:23] the Latin to the old English.
[08:25] Okay.
[08:26] That's what I think.
[08:27] I think it's a direct.
[08:29] Yeah, I think that the calendar format has not changed,
[08:33] right, since, for a long time.
[08:36] And why was it seven?
[08:37] Do we know that?
[08:39] I mean.
[08:40] I think it's just the.
[08:43] That's some biblical stuff, isn't that in the Bible?
[08:46] It is in the Bible, for sure.
[08:47] But.
[08:50] I guess that we would be before that, when I get.
[08:55] Well, so.
[08:57] The first, I think the first written gospels are,
[09:05] you know, 80.
[09:09] I think the last one is.
[09:11] Yeah, the last one, the last gospel is,
[09:13] yeah, early 200s.
[09:16] And then you've got all the letters
[09:18] are probably in the 300s.
[09:19] I mean, so yeah, by the time.
[09:22] And when were the Romans?
[09:23] They were like the.
[09:28] They were like.
[09:29] 100 BC, 180, a little bit around there.
[09:33] Romans, yeah, were like.
[09:35] 500 years, right?
[09:37] 500 BC or 1000 BC, all the way through to.
[09:42] 1000, 80.
[09:44] Right, something.
[09:45] Yeah, okay.
[09:46] So they were around forever.
[09:47] They were around all that time, okay.
[09:49] Yeah.
[09:50] At least to my knowledge.
[09:51] Yeah.
[09:52] This is where we need Harper,
[09:53] because Harper would definitely know.
[09:54] Right, he knows all his Roman history, yeah.
[09:56] But, you know, because as far as like the
[09:59] Yahweh epic or the Jewish, you know,
[10:01] if you're talking about Genesis, you know, the Torah,
[10:06] that would have been an oral history
[10:07] and written down probably, you know, maybe 200 BC.
[10:14] So it's possible that that would influence
[10:18] the Roman calendar.
[10:19] Well, I'm just wondering like who.
[10:23] Well, you shouldn't talk about influence,
[10:25] but I'm trying to think of like who actually gets
[10:27] to make the rules.
[10:27] I mean, that's like a emperor, you know, type, right?
[10:30] Like the political leader would get to like
[10:32] hand that down, right?
[10:33] Not so much from a religious tradition.
[10:36] Maybe, I bet you where the seven days a week
[10:38] comes from is phases of the moon.
[10:41] So a moon, the moon cycle takes 28 days or so.
[10:46] And so that means that, you know, a quarter moon
[10:50] or a half moon, I guess, is seven days.
[10:55] And then another seven days is,
[10:58] so if you started out at new moon,
[11:00] first half moon is seven days.
[11:03] Full moon is another seven days.
[11:05] The second half moon is another seven days.
[11:07] It's gotta be lunar.
[11:08] Okay, okay.
[11:09] So it's a lunar calendar gives us our seven days.
[11:13] So each quarter moon is a week, is that right?
[11:17] Yeah, each half moon.
[11:21] Yeah, okay.
[11:21] Half moon?
[11:22] Each quarter moon.
[11:23] So a quarter would give you seven days
[11:25] and then a half would be 14 days.
[11:28] So you start out at a new moon where there's nothing.
[11:30] Right, right.
[11:31] And then you have a half moon, a waxing half moon.
[11:36] Right.
[11:37] And then you have a full moon
[11:38] and then you have a waning half moon
[11:40] and then you're back to a new moon.
[11:42] So it's all half moons, not quarter moons.
[11:44] Right.
[11:46] Got it.
[11:47] Oh, I see.
[11:47] Okay, I got you, okay.
[11:49] Okay, yeah.
[11:50] And I mean, that's the thing I don't think,
[11:51] yeah, I feel like the Bible was working
[11:53] off of something else, right?
[11:54] I mean, like all of that stuff is metaphor, right?
[11:57] They're going, okay, if it's a seven day week,
[11:58] then God only worked for six days and he taught, you know,
[12:01] like they were just like making,
[12:03] pulling that number out of air, right?
[12:05] Like that's a metaphor.
[12:07] Yeah, and now that I think of it,
[12:09] like all the early calendars are moon related.
[12:12] Based, right, so.
[12:14] Okay, so, so Monday is moon day.
[12:18] We don't have Tuesday.
[12:22] Maybe it's.
[12:23] But it may, but now we're getting back to the idea
[12:25] that it makes sense that it's like celestial objects, right?
[12:28] Yeah.
[12:30] That are the original names of everything.
[12:32] And then now we got to figure out the ones,
[12:34] how we got to, you know, English.
[12:37] Sounds like some of it comes from Norse.
[12:40] Yeah, I mean, if it's Thor, yeah, if it's Norse,
[12:42] it's Thor and Frigga and maybe Odin,
[12:44] but it could be Wednesday, I like that idea.
[12:47] But Saturday is Saturn for sure, right?
[12:50] I mean, is that a Norse God?
[12:53] No.
[12:53] It's a Roman God.
[12:54] It's a Roman God.
[12:55] Yeah.
[12:56] And Mercury and Mars are both Roman gods as well, right?
[13:01] Yes.
[13:02] Okay.
[13:03] So maybe it's just a conglomeration of those things?
[13:06] Yeah, so Tuesday is the outlier.
[13:07] We have no idea.
[13:08] We have no idea.
[13:09] We don't have a theory on Tuesday.
[13:10] No theory on Tuesday.
[13:13] Except that it's, you know, the second day.
[13:14] The second day.
[13:15] It's time for twos.
[13:17] Deuces.
[13:18] Why isn't it deuce day?
[13:22] Oh man, it's gonna be that thing now for me too.
[13:25] It's thirsty deuce day.
[13:26] Drink up.
[13:27] Okay.
[13:29] We have unleashed a monster.
[13:33] If I don't say it's thirsty Thursday next week,
[13:35] you need to remind me, because that's amazing.
[13:42] Okay, yeah, so what I'm seeing on this,
[13:45] the most amazing website of all, sjsu.edu.
[13:52] Some guy, Thayer Watkins, faculty member there.
[13:58] Yeah, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
[14:00] named after celestial bodies, Saturn, Sun, and Moon.
[14:05] Other days are named after Germanic gods.
[14:08] So Tuesday is two, I guess that was a god.
[14:11] Wednesday's Woden, or probably from Odin, I would think.
[14:15] Thursday, Thorsday, and Friday, Freya.
[14:17] Nice, you nailed that Joey.
[14:23] What is the god two, who is two?
[14:26] That's a good question, but who was two?
[14:29] He saved the abode of the gods of Asgard.
[14:35] Two roughly corresponds to the Roman god of war, Mars,
[14:39] whom another planet was named.
[14:41] And so we know that Mars is Martes, so that makes sense.
[14:45] I see, so it's just the Germanic version of Mars?
[14:50] Ish, yeah.
[14:51] Yeah.
[14:53] You can see how maybe they got completed.
[14:58] Of course, this is just one guy's website, so.
[15:00] Right, I'm seeing on Wikipedia,
[15:03] between the first and third centuries,
[15:06] the Roman Empire gradually replaced
[15:07] the eight-day Roman cycle with a seven-day week.
[15:12] The earliest evidence we have of this new system
[15:14] is Pompeian graffito,
[15:18] referring to 6th of February in the year AD 60.
[15:27] Okay, so by AD 60, we had a seven-day week.
[15:32] It sped throughout Roman Empire in late antiquity.
[15:35] By the fourth century,
[15:36] it was wide use throughout the empire
[15:39] and reached India and China.
[15:43] Yes, so this is, yeah, so I'm looking at,
[15:45] there's some other languages
[15:50] that have Thursday,
[15:53] named after Jupiter in some fashion,
[15:56] instead of Thor.
[15:59] Friday sometimes was Venus.
[16:02] Yes, okay, so according to timeanddate.com,
[16:06] the reason why we organize our lives around a seven-day week
[16:09] is quite literally above our heads,
[16:13] based on the moon cycle.
[16:19] It looks like the Greeks from the Hellenistic period
[16:22] created a seven-day planetary week,
[16:24] naming their days after the deities,
[16:27] Helios, Selin, Aries, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Chronos.
[16:33] The Jews also had a seven-day week.
[16:36] Yeah, it seems like it goes back to the Babylonians.
[16:39] Okay, and these things influenced the Romans
[16:42] to drop their eight-day week and move to a seven-day week,
[16:44] because they were all about like just, you know,
[16:47] we're gonna take over the world,
[16:49] so let's make sure we got everybody on board.
[16:52] Right.
[16:53] If that makes your lives easier.
[16:55] Right, exactly.
[16:56] And it will keep you paying taxes, too.
[16:58] Right, I won't, if all I have to do
[17:00] is give you a seven-day week instead of an eight,
[17:02] I don't have to murder you, let's do this, yeah.
[17:08] Okay.
[17:09] Apparently, yeah, Jupiter was Thursday.
[17:13] Yeah, yeah.
[17:14] Okay, interesting.
[17:16] So Tuesday is from, yeah, the Norse god.
[17:21] From the Germanic Norse god, too, T-I-W.
[17:27] And it's the Romans' name this day
[17:29] after there were god Mars,
[17:34] and the old English, Tuesday.
[17:38] So in French and Spanish, it's Marty.
[17:42] And in the Netherlands, it's.
[17:45] Good old Marty.
[17:46] Din's dang.
[17:48] Hey, it's Marty.
[17:49] Hey, I'm Marty, the war god.
[17:51] What are you doing?
[17:55] I would watch that movie.
[18:03] Okay, so yeah, so Tuesday was the difficult one.
[18:07] We apparently didn't know that the Norse
[18:10] or German version of Mars was.
[18:14] Two.
[18:14] Two.
[18:15] Everything else, we kinda nailed, though, honestly.
[18:18] For the most part.
[18:19] Good on us, yeah.
[18:21] Yeah.
[18:23] And you nailed the moon cycle thing, Jason.
[18:26] Yeah.
[18:27] And we also brought in the Hebrews.
[18:29] We maybe killed this.
[18:30] Yeah.
[18:33] Why do they even need Google?
[18:35] Just call us.
[18:36] See how easy that was for us.
[18:39] It only took us 20 minutes
[18:40] to figure out the days of the week.
[18:42] It's fine.
[18:43] And then source it through Wikipedia
[18:45] to make sure we were right.
[18:47] Sure.
[18:48] And we still had no idea where Tuesday came from.
[18:50] But hey, who needs the internet?
[18:51] That's all I'm saying.
[18:52] You think we should start doing,
[18:54] you know how on Google,
[18:56] when you do a search it tells you how long it took
[18:58] to get too many answers?
[19:01] You think we should start doing that for our own Google list?
[19:04] 0.076 seconds, and it's like 25 minutes or so.
[19:09] 25 minutes to come up with 18 different answers.
[19:12] They were right-ish.
[19:14] One was right.
[19:16] They were right-ish.
[19:18] It's qualified, too.
[19:20] Great.
[19:23] Yeah.
[19:24] Nailed it.
[19:25] Next question.
[19:27] Are you good?
[19:28] Yeah, no, I feel good about that.
[19:30] I'm ready, yeah.
[19:31] Let's just, I'm ready to take on the days of the week.
[19:36] So, oh, the one thing I was gonna ask,
[19:38] so those were all, no Greek gods, right?
[19:42] They were all Roman or Germanic.
[19:44] Is that correct?
[19:44] Norse, yeah.
[19:45] Okay, Norse.
[19:46] So the Greek ones got snubbed out
[19:48] and it's a Roman gods world, you know?
[19:53] They're just living in it.
[19:54] Yeah, that's right.