Why was 12 pick as the months and also pick?

Question

as hours for ex. 12 months/ 12 hours in a day why is twelve the number.

Answer 1

There used to be 10 months. A long time ago two men named Octavian and Julius thought they were famous enough to get their own months, and apparently they were. So July and October were then created. This sorta screwed everything up though, because Dec means 10, and December is now the twelfth month, not the tenth.

Answer 2

Well, the notion of months tends to arise pretty naturally from our planetary cycles.  A complete cycle of the moon takes about 30 days, so if you count how many lunar cycles you have each year you get about twelve (but not EXACTLY twelve, which is why a lot of early calendars were screwed up).

Exactly why there are twelve hours in a day or a night is less clear, as it is just about as old as counting lunar cycles (the credit is often given to Ancient Egypt).  Most seem to believe that it's no coincidence - knowing that a year was twelve months, astronomers of the time may have just decided to divide a day into twelve hours.

Incidentally, this is also why a circle has 360 degrees... early (inaccurate) counts put a year at 360 days.  And since a yearly cycle was 360, those ancient geometers decided that was a good way to divide up any circle.

Hope that helps!

PS:  For the record, there was a time when the Romans had less than twelve months... but they also had an empty period after december that didn't fall in ANY month (sixty days in winter).  January and February were added later (along with a 'leap month' Mercedonius).  See link below for details.

Answer 3

No Hi, you are mistaken

The Romans had 12 months, starting with Martis (March).

The 5th and 6th months were called Quintilis and Sextilis (meaning 5th and 6th months)

  Later they were renamed in honour of Julius and Augustus Caesar (aka Octavianus, the 1st emperor), from which we get the English names July and August.