It’s still 2016 in this country thanks to its unique calendar system. What to know
Most places on Earth are separated by a mere sliver in time. For New York and London, it’s five hours. For Los Angeles and Sydney, it’s 17 hours.
But at least one country, by comparison, exists in total temporal isolation. Its time difference with the rest of the world is measured not in hours or even days, but in years.
Owing to its unique calendar, Ethiopia is, at any given time, between seven and eight years ”behind” most other countries, which use the Gregorian calendar. Within its borders, the year is currently 2016.
While the calendar, known as the Ge’ez calendar, occasionally causes some confusion, it is just a fact of life for most of the country’s more than 120 million residents, according to experts.
“I wouldn’t say they’re behind us,” James McCann, an emeritus professor of history at Boston University, said. “That kind of conveys that there’s something wrong with it. It’s just different.”
Origins of the Ge’ez calendar
The Ethiopian calendar likely originated sometime between 4th and 5th centuries A.D., making it at least 1,500 years old and thus older than the Gregorian calendar, Menachem Magidor, an Israeli mathematician and expert in calendar systems, told McClatchy News.
It is more or less the same calendar used in Roman Egypt, Magidor said.
The Ge’ez aligns with the Julian calendar — on which the Gregorian calendar was later modeled — though there are key distinctions.
When formulating the Ethiopian calendar, a monk named Panorodos placed the birth of Christ, the calendar’s beginning point, at eight years later than other scholars.
“This explains the difference of 7-8 years between the numbers that we assign to a year and the number the Ethiopians assign to the year,” Magidor said.
Additionally, unlike the 12-month Gregorian calendar, the Ethiopian calendar contains 13 months, the last of which spans only five days.
Potentially making matters more complicated, Ethiopia uses a different clock than most other countries. Instead of 24 hours, it has 12 hours and begins at dawn rather than midnight.
Integration in modern life
Ethiopia’s unique calendar and clock usually seamlessly integrate into modern-day life, where they exist alongside the Gregorian calendar and 24-hour day, Verena Krebs, a historian specializing in Ethiopia, said.
“In Ethiopia, the two dating systems often coexist, and their use is relational,” Krebs said. “Universities and government branches or any official correspondence often also use the ‘Western’ calendar for official documents.”
News media, such as English-language newspapers in the country, provide both the Ethiopian calendar dates and the western date, McCann said.
“It was a little bit confusing for the changing of the millennium because they were putting up their New Years celebrations seven years behind what we were doing here,” McCann said.
The dual calendars have also resulted in some unintended oddities, including multiple birthdays, Krebs said. Her Ethiopian friend, for example, has both his “real” Ethiopian calendar birthday as well as a separate birthday listed on his passport.
As a result, “we get to celebrate his birthday twice a year,” Krebs said.
When it comes to determining the time of the day people are referring to “you just use your common sense a lot,” Krebs said.
If someone in Ethiopia says “let’s meet tomorrow for dinner at 1,” it should be assumed that they mean 7 p.m. in western time, not 1 p.m.
Despite the potential for confusion, Ethiopia has shown a steadfast adherence to its unique calendar, which stands as a testament to the resilience of tradition.
“I’ve not seen any movement to say ‘let’s get off the Julian calendar,’” McCann said.
It’s also important to note that the country is not alone in its unique system of time-keeping, Krebs said.
For example, the Buddhist calendar observed in Thailand diverges from the Gregorian calendar by several centuries.
“And at the heart of it, our ‘Common Era’ calendar is nothing but a different — one may say, euphemistic — word for ‘AD’ or ‘anno domini/in the year of our lord’, the very much specific Latin Christian calendar system used in much of the ‘West,’” Krebs said.
So throughout the world, Krebs said, “measuring time is far from neutral.”
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