Another phenomenon I’ve found curious is the cross-cultural definition of a week as roughly a quarter moon, and correlated names for days of the week. [1]
> I think the 7-day week is more of a statement about how effective the Judeo-Christian culture has imposed a modern week on the rest of the world.
The 7-day week originated in Sumerian Babylon culture from 2100 BC and has to do with quartering moon phases. I worry when seeing many things attributed to "Judeo-Christian culture" which actually originated from other cultures, many aspects of what's in "Judeo-Christian culture" including perhaps some of the key stories in the Old Testament like the Flood appear to have been copied or at least inspired by stories from Sumerian culture which was considered the 'high culture' of the region.
They definitely didn’t invent it, but I would say it’s fair to give Christianity itself credit for converting Rome to a 7 day week & then most of the rest of the world after. It takes a religion with certain characteristics to accomplish that.
> it’s fair to give Christianity itself credit for converting Rome to a 7 day week
How so? Constantinus was the one who committed to the change and the day names were after the Roman Gods. Even today, we're using Viking names, like today happens to be Odin's Day, tomorrow's going to be Thor's Day and the day after is going to be Freya's Day. I'm not sure it is reasonable or rational to "credit Christianity itself".
As far as I understand from the Wikipedia article, this practice has spread directly from Judaism (7 days) through Christianity through the Roman Empire (which renamed the days according to the planets/gods) to all of these places. It's not clear from the article if perhaps the Ancient Greeks had a similar system already - but otherwise, the Indians and the Chinese adopted this system from Roman/Hellenistic sources between the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, and other cultures around them adopted it from them slightly later.
These are more jargon imports that came bundled with the 7-day week after the Romans, and then Europe, popularized it after adopting it. As an analogy, you don't hear many other ways of naming tea and coffee across cultures.
