Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: voodooqueen126 on August 18, 2009, 10:07:32 PM
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Andalite Dates:
Key: 84 Earth months=1 Andalite Year =7 Earth Years.
1 Earth Month = 30 Earth Days. 84*30=2520 Days
Each Andalite year has 10 Andalite months (possibly each time the moons align) the number of days in an Andalite month is 2520÷10=252.
Chapter 1 of Hork-Bajir Chronicles Chapter 2 of Hork-Bajir Chronicles
Andalite Year 8561.2 8563.5
Human Year 1966 1968
Taking into account that an Andalite year is 84 Earth Months (roughly 7 years on earth) we must conclude that since only 2 rather than 7 years have passed on Earth (between chapters 1 and 2 of HBC) that the final two digits of the Andalite year (1.2 and 3.5) have both changed we must conclude that not every digit on the Andalite date refers to years or months.
Perhaps the .2 and the .5 refer to days and the final 1 and 3 before the decimal point refer to months like this.
Chapter 1 of Hork Bajir Chronicles Chapter 2 of Hork Bajir Chronicles
Andalite Date 2nd day 1st month 856th year 5th day 3rd month 856th year
856*7=5992 human years since Andalites began counting dates: since Andalites are considerably older than humans we must conclude that this date refers to a historical event (similar to the Islamic calendar that counts from the Hijra) rather than mythological event (like the Hindu calendar that counts from the mythological death of Krishna).
Since each Andalite month lasts 252 days, 3rd month must be the 505th day of the year.
505+5=510. It is therefore the 510th day of the Andalite year in chapter 2 of the Hork-Bajir Chronicles. Since Chapter 1 took place 2nd of the 1st month of the same year to find out how many days have passed 510-2=508 days.
Now this still gives slight difficulty with the human date
Unfortunately 2 years have passed on earth (1966-1968) or approximately 730 days, unless you conclude that it was late 1966 or early 1968 respectively.
Chapter 1 must have occurred in the later part of 1966 let’s say around the 1st of December/336th day of the year of 1966. To find when in 1968 this must have occurred we do this 508-336=172. Therefore chapter 2 must have occurred approximately on the 172nd day of 1968, which is around May…
The latter sums are all a bit approximate, better maths or ideas or clarification would be most welcome.
However it should also be noted that in Chapter 1 of the Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Aldrea seems very young (perhaps a toddler) and yet in Chapter 2 of HBC she seems to be in late adolescence. Perhaps 2 Andalite years have passed (which is to say 14 earth years) which is to say that it went from being 2nd month of 8561 year to the 5th month 8563 year, but due to space time relativity (or some other complex physics theory that I don’t understand) only 2 years have passed on Earth, this however presents a few problems: Andalites would basically age by 7 years for every 1 year that passed on earth, although it does explain why the war seems to have lasted hundreds of years to the Andalites when it is has really only been going on since the late 1960’s… if this is the case then Andalites have been counting their dates since 8561Andalite years*7=59927 human years, which points to a mythological date in history or ancient historical date at the latest, even for a species as old as the Andalites. But still yikes.
The Andalite Year:
As there are 2 Equinoxes and 2 Solstices each year totally 4:2520÷4=630. Equinoxes and Solstices occur every 630 days, Quarter-cross days occur every 315 days, marking the beginning of a new season, as in the Chinese calendar. Calculations are for the Northern Hemisphere; obviously this is reversed for the southern hemisphere (i.e. Summer Solstice occurs on the 2205th day of the year in the southern hemisphere):
1st Day: New Years Day, First Day of spring
253th day of the year: 2nd Month begins
316th day of the year: Spring Equinox, 63rd day of 2nd Month
505th day of the year: 3rd Month begins
631th day of the year: first day of summer, 126th day of 3rd Month
757th day of the year: 4th month begins
946th day of the year: Summer Solstice, 189th day of 4th month
1009th day of the year: 5th month begins
1029th day of the year: Ramika Day (north only), 20th day of 5th month (equivalent of Qixi festival)
1261th day of the year: 6th month begins, First Day of Autumn
1513th day of the year: 7th month begins
1564th day of the year: Autumn Holidays begin, 51nd of the 7th month.
1576th day of the year: Autumn Equinox, 63rd day of 7th month
1603rd day of the year: End of Autumn holidays, 91st of the 7th month.
1765th day of the year: 8th month begins
1891th day of the year: First day of winter, 126th day of 8th month.
2017th day of the year: 9th month begins
2206th day of the year: Winter Solstice, 189th day of 9th month
2269th day of the year: 10th month begins
2520th day of the year: New Years Eve, 252nd Day of 10th month
Not yet added arbitrary or historical festivals: Kheirawn Day (similar to the Taiwanese Confucius Day), Discovering Zero Space Flight Anniversary, Warrior’s Day, Electorate Day, and Arts Day etc…
New Years Eve occurs 315 days after the Winter Solstice. I haven’t yet decided how many Days the festivities should last: I am undecided between 14 days (as Andalites have 7 fingers on each hand) or 18 days which is fingers+4 hooves, or 28 days which is double the number of fingers, or 32 days which is double the number of fingers+ hooves or 36 days which is double fingers + double hooves. (Similar to the way that certain numbers are popular in amongst humans such as 3, 5, 10, 12)
Previously my calculations had the spring Equinox as New Years Eve or the 2520th day of the Andalite year, rather like the Persian calendar where New Year is the spring equinox (Nowruz). But this was based on a miscalculation (I had added 630 to 1 then doubled it and was surprised when the spring equinox was New Year’s see previous correspondence). Whilst other miscalculations made in this process was giving each Andalite month 250 days when the correct number was 252. The calendar is broadly based off the Chinese calendar (studying the Chinese calendar helped me decide on a date for new years-indeed Chinese New Year actually marks the beginning of spring). Unlike the Chinese calendar, my Andalite calendar is not lunisolar, for two reasons:
1. Lunisolar is very difficult to calculate and changes from year to year, as this article on Wikipedia demonstrates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar
2. According to Wikipedia Luna calendars are very useful for maritime cultures (this does not explain why the Islamic calendar is lunar) as they help calculate when tides will occur. As the Andalites are not a maritime species this would be irrelevant to them.
3. However the odd number of months 10 months in a year that lasts 2520 days was hypothesised to be based on the number of moon alignments so that Andalites must observe the moon sometimes.
Other things like the perihelion, moon alignment or full moons may be added in randomly? Other festivities based on other natural events shall be added as suggestions are given, as well as culturally based festivals or days marking historical events. I am still uncertain about leap years.
At the moment my Andalite months are called 1st month, 2nd month etc, since KA Applegate based a few things off Tolkien, I am thinking of using Elvish as a basis for Andalite linguistics... remember that calling months things like “wet month”, “cold month” etc would only be applicable to the northern hemisphere (or southern hemisphere if Andalites are a southern hemisphere based species unlike humans) which results in excluding 50% of Andalites, I tried basing the month names off the Eight Immortals of Chinese mythology, but this didn’t seem linguistically compatible with names like Alloran and Esgarrouth (which are both based off Tolkien’s Elvish)…
In the text Andalites seemed to have a great respect for authority and love of ritual, as an Asian studies student, this suggests a philosophy similar to Confucianism, taking into account Alloran’s jab to Loren “pray to whatever primitive gods you have human” implies that were probably once polytheists, they also seemed to glorify suicide which implies Shinto as their primitive/original religion (unless the Andalites aren’t Shinto but Stoics in the ancient Roman tradition). For this reason I based my Andalite festivals off Japanese and Chinese festivals, of course other fans might interpret Andalites very differently from me so I need to keep my calendar unbiased enough that fans with different interpretations can use this calendar as a useful tool to get consistent dates.
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so Ax is how old?
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2 andalite years=14 earth years
3 andalite years=21 earth years
to be in the military i am guessing he was atleast 16 in book 4.
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but I guess we can factor in the fact that Andalites live a lot longer into the equation so mentally Ax is about the same age as the rest of the Animorphs. Doesn't he say he wants to live to 200 which would make him 1400 years old. He must have been using Earth Units.
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Wow you guys are smart also maybe alloran thought humans were polytheistic and it was book 8 where ax said "if I live to be 200 I'll still be known as elfangor's little brother"
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Wow you guys are smart also maybe alloran thought humans were polytheistic and it was book 8 where ax said "if I live to be 200 I'll still be known as elfangor's little brother"
Are you making fun of my tendency to over analyse things?
I am saying that because Alloran was from a culture that would've been polytheistic originally or still was (if you don't subscribe the theory below)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions
and so he assumed human gods were primitive?
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No I'm complamenting you
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:o
*starts slow clap*
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It is really hard but very necessary for me as I one of my fanfictions is about the andalite homeworld so i needed a consistent understanding of Andalite culture and time.
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I tried to read that last night when I was drunk
It didn't work lol
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the calendar, i am trying to put into an excel document to make it more palatable.
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I'm trying to read it while sober.
Not working
Just one question though; where does the 7 Earth years to one Andalite year come from?
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This is also working off of the assumption that The Andalite home world only has one moon. It may have more, or none even. Also assuming that the moon rotates and revolves the same direction. There are a lot of assumptions, remember Earth is not exactly the same as the Andalite world; as far as size, position from the sun, and number of moons.
The calculations are great, and the Excel doc is a good idea, however taxing. But creating moon phases and holidays may be going a bit far. We have tons of Holidays, not all of them are strategically placed.
Also, in regards to naming months like "wet month" and "cold month" seems a little belittling too a race so advanced and prideful of their intelligence. I can understand if Hork-bajir called it "wet month" and "cold month", but Andalites would undoubtedly have names for seasons and months.
In regards to Alloran telling Loren to "pray to whatever gods" may have just been the fact that he's visited many species, all of which have had singular or multiple gods. It was just a generalization.
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This is also working off of the assumption that The Andalite home world only has one moon. It may have more, or none even. Also assuming that the moon rotates and revolves the same direction. There are a lot of assumptions, remember Earth is not exactly the same as the Andalite world; as far as size, position from the sun, and number of moons.
This is very true, and very important. There is an incredible amount of possible variation. On the planet Venus, a day is longer than its year, yet a day on Jupiter is a mere 10 hours.
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On the planet Venus, a day is longer than its year, yet a day on Jupiter is a mere 10 hours.
Really? That's crazy!
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Think again is right
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The andalite homeworld has 4 moons
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Really? Where did it say that? THBC?
That's a lot of moons, and some crazy tides.
So again, who know how fast they go around, how close they get, how often are they in the same area of the sky?
When you have too many variables, mathematics can't be applied. Sorry if I put a bee in your bonnet.
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In the Andalite Chronicles, Elfangor says something like "when all four moons are in the sky it's almost as bright as day."
And I don't think the Andalite homeworld has that much water, so the tides might not be a big deal. I was always more interested in how their binary star system works.
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Nope, there's no mention of the Andalite moons in TAC. I just scanned it. It's probably in a diff book, like Visser, or THBC.
:edit:
If you follow this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalite_terminology), you'll also see that the planet has more than one sun. That'll change things considerably. Also it was Ax who said the "bright as day" quote.
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Oh yeah my bad, it was #8
and I have a question--Earth
has seasons because it's tilted a few degrees on it's vertical axis. Is there any indication that the Andalite homeworld is the same way? Do most planets tilt a little? Any astronomy buffs out there?
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http://anificforum.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=363&start=160
watch how the calendar developed on this other forum, I wish I had found this forum much earlier as the people here are much more scientifically minded and involved.
The Andalite year thing comes from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalites
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These are some of the replies from the other forum:
Walkatdog:
The Hork-Bajir Chronicles gives us several details about the Andalite homeworld and star system. I believe this was during the conversation in which the planets of the Hork-Bajir system were given names. The Andalite system has two suns that are yellow stars and that are close together ( a matter of a few thousand miles).
Vooodooqueen: This explains how the Andalites are able to have such a long year but still enjoy a warm climate (see below) Pluto has a very long year because it is so far away from the sun however this also makes Pluto very cold and lifeless, obviously Andal is closer in than Pluto but having two suns at the centre of the solar system (effectively acting as 1 big sun) means that the years are long but the climate still warm, any planet with a 365 day year would be closer in to the 2 Suns and would be hotter than Venus.
Walkatdog: When Elfangor first saw earth, he was surprised by the polar caps and asked if they were frozen Carbon dioxide. He was also surprised that humans would live anywhere that was cold. This indicates that the Andalite homeworld does not have polar ice caps. Since he was shocked by the amount of water on earth also, the Andalite homeworld must not have has many oceans. The migration of Antarctica to the south pole coupled with the perpetual tilt of the earth's axis allowed snow to accumulate on one pole and caused the last five million years of cycles between ice ages and warm periods (and caused the earth to always have polar ice caps.) Since there is likely to be land under one of the andalite homeworld's axis of rotation (poles) due to the much greater amount of land, there cannot be a significant tilt in the planet's rotation. Since the tilt is what causes seasons on earth, the same mechanism cannot cause seasons on the andalite homeworld.
Ax said that there were few meadows on earth where an andalite can live. The location of the Anamorphs is probably southern California, a relatively stable environment that is decently warm. This is in agreement with the location of Edriss's initial landing and comments made by Applegate. The andalite homeworld would uniformly have a climate that is approximately like southern california.
Vooodooqueen: The mild tilt may cause milder seasons, a lack of seasons would be a monoclimate. This works, if Andalite seasons were as pronounced as they are in North America then due to the incredible length of the year Andalites would freeze in winter and dehydrate in Summer. To the mild seasoned Andalite the coldest midwinter solstice on which ever pole would be no colder than Melbourne in July, the Andalite would complain bitterly of the cold but the temperature wouldn't have dropped below -5 degrees at night and the frost would melt by midmorning...An andalite homeworld with pronounced seasons would be like the song of ice and fire.
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So that kinda screws up the whole Seasons and solstices and such, right?
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In the Andalite Chronicles, Elfangor says something like "when all four moons are in the sky it's almost as bright as day."
And I don't think the Andalite homeworld has that much water, so the tides might not be a big deal. I was always more interested in how their binary star system works.
Since month is homophone with Moon, a month is basically to do with the moon... Since we have 1 moon our months are how many times we see the full moon (approximately gross generelisation) or 12 months per year. my hypothesis is that an Andalite month is how many times the 4 moons align in the sky each year or 10 times per year, though their year is 84 earth months. One of the reasons I gave the Andalites a purely solar calendar (unlike the chinese calendar which was my main inspiration) is that Andalites are large herbivores with few oceans on their homeworld so they have neither the oppurtunity nor the inclination to be a maritime culture and therefore aside from the months no interest in the moon.
in reply to Yarin: mild tilt=mild seasons.
As for the holidays being intune with nature: most of the people on this forum have a western background which is to say monotheistic in origin, one of the main aims of monotheism is to avert the worship of nature. It is thought that the creation story in Genesis is a 'take that' to polytheistic/nature worship religions and their creation stories, God, in 7 days and absolutely no effort created the sun and moon, ocean and trees that polytheists worship. Pre christian European, pre-islamic Middle East and modern Asian festivals were/are in tune with nature. Indeed this irritating propaganda website criticises Christian festivals for not being intune with nature: (ignore we are so lovely stuff and read their critique of festivals being a commeroation of historical events rather than natural cycles.
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Nature_Worship.htm
As for the months being called things like 'wet month' and how undignified that is... well advanced cultures like the Japanese have flower month, water month, frost month etc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar
I think the andalite months would've originally been called after natural phenomena like for example 'month of Est flower' because the est flower only flowers in that month. But as the Andalites moved on to inhabit the whole of their planet (moving from say the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere as happened on earth or vice versa if they started off in the southern hemisphere and moved north) month names would have changed from localised nature phenomena to things that are planet wide 'Election month' teacher month or Small moon month or Altair and Vega Month etc... to incorporate the expansion of Andalite populations. Or they could keep their localised natural phenomena and apply it to everybody (like we do on earth) for instance April is the month in which flowers begin to open in the northern hemisphere and April word comes from Aperire in latin to open... But April is the end of autumn in Australia etc. Plus christmas is the midwinter solstice when it is the midsummer solstice here:( This causes confusion.
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I was able to email micheal grant (with the calendar attached) and his reply is thus:
"....I wish we could contribute something to it... We were writing ANIMORPHS at a pace of 14 books per year -- regular, Megas and Chronicles. In some ways it's like working on an assembly line in that there's no time to slow down, no time to second-guess. Every 30 days we needed to produce another book, plus the long form books. When Katherine was delivering our son I was in a dark waiting room at 2 am writing book #11. When I was down with flu she carried the load. We kept up but barely.
The point being that it was less about careful planning and more about improvising. We'd come up with something for a particular book and have almost no memory of it three books later.
So the truth is we simply don't have any answers. You know more about it than we do."""
I guess since there is no canon on this issue, what particular questions could we break this calendar down into to and then just ask for M and K a quick "word of author statement" that they could make up on the spot in much the same way that JK Rowling added Dumbledore's sexuality and a lot of other things after the Deathly Hollows was finished. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfGod
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Your work on this is beyond awesome, and on behalf of everyone I thank you for all of your time and effort.
I totally agree that seasons/holidays/names of months would be nature-based: even if all of the Christian holidays are supposed to be a take-that to pagan sun worshippers or whatever, Christmas still falls close to the winter solstice despite the fact that Christ was probably born in October, and Easter is suspiciously close to the first day of spring, with a holiday that is entirely about rebirth.
Having said that, I know this is an answer people hate hearing, but I think grant is right. Rowling got more than 10 years to flesh out seven books. Applegrant got about 5 to flesh out 60. Both fans and creator have acknowledges the inconsistencies in the series, and when we get to so detailed a level of scrutiny, I really start to think that there's no way to account for everything unless we start making stuff up. Which I don't really think is a bad thing. That's why it's my favorite fandom :)
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As for the holidays being intune with nature: most of the people on this forum have a western background which is to say monotheistic in origin, one of the main aims of monotheism is to avert the worship of nature.
Well, I can't speak for all monotheistic religions, but Catholic Tradition at least splits the definition of "worship" into two parts: sacrificial worship, latria, which is due to God alone, and non-sacrificial worship, dulia, appreciation of--not service towards--created persons and things. In other words, things are a bit more complicated, and it's not fair to say that monotheists ignore nature entirely.
Pre christian European, pre-islamic Middle East and modern Asian festivals were/are in tune with nature. ...
Catholicism has four seasonal feasts that roughly coincide with the start of the seasons:
(northern-hemisphere)
Winter: Nativity of Our Lord ("Christmas," "Yule")
Spring: Paschal Triduum ("Easter")
Summer: Pentecost ("Whitsun")
Autumn: Christ the King (following the Second Vatican Council, also "Catholic New Year"--prior to that, Exultation of the Holy Cross / "Holyrood")
Pentecost is earlier than the solstice, and Easter always slightly later than its corresponding equinox. They move around so that the Paschal Triduum be commemorated for three nights under the first full moon of spring. Yes, really. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computus) "Not in tune with nature" and all that. ;D
As for the months being called things like 'wet month' and how undignified that is... well advanced cultures like the Japanese have flower month, water month, frost month etc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar
Modern Japanese month names are boring things like "five-month" ("gogatsu") and "ten-month" ("juugatsu"). The older names are mostly limited to poetic use.
But, don't forget the days of the week. The seven day week derives from astrology: there are seven visible non-stellar objects: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, in the classical order, the source of all sorts of modern silliness.
Thus, the classical Latin names of the weekdays are things like 'Day of Saturn."
Germans translated these names, substituting their gods for the Greco-Roman ones. English follows this pattern: "Sun-day," "Moon-day," "Tyr's-day," "Oden's-day," etc.
The Hebrew calendar numbers the weekdays: Day 1 through Day 6 and Sabbath Day. Christians renamed Day 1 the "Lord's Day" but otherwise kept the same pattern. Most European languages combine Christian names with the Roman ones: "Lord's-day, Moon-day, Mars-day, etc."
Greek astrology also migrated to China, where, like the Germans, the Chinese changed the system to fit their own names of the seven astronomical objects. The Chinese used names like "water star" for Mercury (Probably still do. The Japanese do (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E6%98%9F). This system reached Japan by the Heian era (roughly 1000 AD) and is used today in Japan. (China now uses numbered weekdays. How boring.)
I think the andalite months would've originally been called after natural phenomena like for example 'month of Est flower' because the est flower only flowers in that month. ...
Or, they might not use months at all. Traditional Chinese and Japanese calendars divide the year into the Twenty-Four Terms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jieqi) (Japanese "nijuu sekki") based on the Sun's position against the celestial sphere. This system existed alongside the lunisolar calendar and was especially useful for agriculture. Now, it's mostly for scheduling festivals and the like.
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Again, these are all based on human understandings and human tendencies. Andalites are far from human. There's no way to guess what they would worship or respect.
Over 8000 years, It's more likely that they've created actual names for "months" and "days". Yes, Japan and China are nature worshipers, but they're given names too. However since we have no extended translation guides, I think it would just be best to stick to your mathematical calendar.
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well the whole reason i put this up, is help with the discrepancy between chapter 1 and 2 of HBC.
Like I said modern andalites have fairly boring names for months and such like but older poetic names (similar to weathel's japanese example) would be things like flower month...
My intuition about Andalites is that they are very nature conscious and if they worshipped anything, it would be nature.
Arabic, Hebrew and some extreme Presbyterians call the days of th week after numbers, I don't think the desire to avoid polytheism is a bad thing so when I say that monotheism is supposed to avert nature worship it is not a criticism, Hindu wisdom was critical but aside from the interesting way of looking at things it is still a very irritating website.
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modern andalites have fairly boring names for months and such
Well, May and June aren't exactly breath-taking names either ;D
I've always hated September, mostly 'cause Sept = 7 and September is not the 7th month.
well the whole reason i put this up, is help with the discrepancy between chapter 1 and 2 of HBC.
I fear this may just be a case of KA making up something cool on the fly, and not delving too far into it to make sure it corresponded correctly.
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I haven't taken a latin class in like 4 years, but iirc when "september" was introduced as a month it was the seventh month, along with october-december, and then they added july and august and named them after the respective caesars
but it's been a really long time since I took latin
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It may have been 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th, but not anymore, dammit!
It still pisses me off.
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If it helps the show I saw on NatGeo the other night said that most binary stars emit a circular trail of dust as they orbit each other, the path dictated by a larger star.
Oh, and could someone quote what's actually said about the suns and when they rise? It may be that Andal is orbiting between the two stars in the system.
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we need either of the authors to do this at the very least.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitlekzrxgx4f?from=Main.SureWhyNot
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I watched that show
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so we need to start summarising fanon theories and get them confirmed. I am now certain that Andalites have seasons, from the ellimist chronicles: concerned with keeping the fire going, with maintaining the roof of my little scoop, with carefully avoiding over feeding in dry weather, with tending the trees so they would drop their deliciousleaves at harrvest time..
My big one is the Andalite dates or this:
Chapter 1 of Hork-Bajir Chronicles Chapter 2 of Hork-Bajir Chronicles
Andalite Year 8561.2 8563.5
Human Year 1966 1968
Taking into account that an Andalite year is 84 Earth Months (roughly 7 years on earth) we must conclude that since only 2 rather than 7 years have passed on Earth (between chapters 1 and 2 of HBC) that the final two digits of the Andalite year (1.2 and 3.5) have both changed we must conclude that not every digit on the Andalite date refers to years or months.
Perhaps the .2 and the .5 refer to days and the final 1 and 3 before the decimal point refer to months like this.
Chapter 1 of Hork Bajir Chronicles Chapter 2 of Hork Bajir Chronicles
Andalite Date 2nd day 1st month 856th year 5th day 3rd month 856th year
856*7=5992 human years since Andalites began counting dates: since Andalites are considerably older than humans we must conclude that this date refers to a historical event (similar to the Islamic calendar that counts from the Hijra) rather than mythological event (like the Hindu calendar that counts from the mythological death of Krishna).
Since each Andalite month lasts 252 days, 3rd month must be the 505th day of the year.
505+5=510. It is therefore the 510th day of the Andalite year in chapter 2 of the Hork-Bajir Chronicles. Since Chapter 1 took place 2nd of the 1st month of the same year to find out how many days have passed 510-2=508 days.
Now this still gives slight difficulty with the human date
Unfortunately 2 years have passed on earth (1966-1968) or approximately 730 days, unless you conclude that it was late 1966 or early 1968 respectively.
Chapter 1 must have occurred in the later part of 1966 let’s say around the 1st of December/336th day of the year of 1966. To find when in 1968 this must have occurred we do this 508-336=172. Therefore chapter 2 must have occurred approximately on the 172nd day of 1968, which is around May…
The latter sums are all a bit approximate, better maths or ideas or clarification would be most welcome.
However it should also be noted that in Chapter 1 of the Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Aldrea seems very young (perhaps a toddler) and yet in Chapter 2 of HBC she seems to be in late adolescence. Perhaps 2 Andalite years have passed (which is to say 14 earth years) which is to say that it went from being 2nd month of 8561 year to the 5th month 8563 year, but due to space time relativity (or some other complex physics theory that I don’t understand) only 2 years have passed on Earth, this however presents a few problems: Andalites would basically age by 7 years for every 1 year that passed on earth, although it does explain why the war seems to have lasted hundreds of years to the Andalites when it is has really only been going on since the late 1960’s… if this is the case then Andalites have been counting their dates since 8561Andalite years*7=59927 human years, which points to a mythological date in history or ancient historical date at the latest, even for a species as old as the Andalites. But still yikes.
Does anybody know of a way to calculate the andalite date for any given human year? If someone could that could be incredibly useful. Please help!
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Do you think the Andalites have a lot of holidays?
I bet they have like some sort of a spring-rebirth holiday. And at least one that strictly involves shame.
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Probably, I based my Andalite festivals off shinto ones :-\ as the Andalites always seemed like Space Samurai to me. I remember the Onion said of the Japanese "given the ability to feel shame a hundred times worse than any normal human" so you know it fits...
Here is a question a maths/physics person might help me figure out: what is the andalite date in 1982 or 1970 or 1990?