Probably because most calendars started as lunar or lunar-based. There is also the case that separating the year by month could be beneficial for farmers back in the day to plan different activities throughout the year. I've always like the names of the months in the French Republican Calendar[1] because of that.
Which is probably because it's too fine a granularity, especially historically: even an ordinal month-day had limited use to preindustrial contexts were time-boundaries were necessary quite fuzzy owing to the vagaries of communications or transport.
Technically you don't need years either, but chunky boundaries are useful as both reference points and communication shortcuts.
ainar-g|3 years ago
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar#Mon...
smitty1e|3 years ago
masklinn|3 years ago
Which is probably because it's too fine a granularity, especially historically: even an ordinal month-day had limited use to preindustrial contexts were time-boundaries were necessary quite fuzzy owing to the vagaries of communications or transport.
Technically you don't need years either, but chunky boundaries are useful as both reference points and communication shortcuts.
stickfigure|3 years ago
mort96|3 years ago
11235813213455|3 years ago