Why Are There 7 Days in a Week

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Transcript

00:00Have you always wondered why there are seven days in a week, and how do those days get their names?

00:05Well, the seven-day week goes way back. Over 4,000 years, the Babylonians discovered that

00:10they could see seven bright objects in the night sky with their naked eye. The sun, the moon,

00:15Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Now, fast forward to the Roman Empire,

00:20and they kept the seven-day week calendar, but wanted to name the days. They could have chosen

00:25almost anything. Animals, kitchen appliances, I don't know, pizza toppings. Can we get together

00:30on Pepperoni Day? However, the Romans, being Romans, decided to honor their gods. But here's where it

00:35gets fun. Centuries later, Germanic tribes, think Vikings, looked at the Roman calendar and said,

00:41Love it. They looked at the whole sky object concept and said, Absolutely love it. But they had one

00:47minor tweak. What do you say we switch out those Roman gods for our own gods? And that, with a

00:52little English influence, morphed into the week that we know today. Always wondered. Stream it now,

00:58wherever you get your podcasts.