A Ten day Week Would be Too Long

We owe the Babylonians a great big thank you that we have a seven-day week rather then a ten-day week. The Babylonians were enthusiastic astronomers, who based the majority of their mathematical systems on the movement of the stars and other heavenly bodies. The first division of time was the day followed by the month.

The reason the month, and not the week, came next was because of the moon. A month can be tracked by the cycle of the moon, which is twenty-nine and a half days. This creates a problem because there is no even division of days into a twenty-nine and one-half day month. Four comes closest to an even division, however the Babylonians decided on seven and the number of days in a week.

Other cultures came up with other number for the division of a week, but seven and ten were the most popular. Because of various other factors the seven-day week became the most popular and is the one used today. At present, people normally work either five or six days a week and take one or two day off, usually on the weekends. We set our weekly schedule and goals to a seven-day week and most of our activities revolve around a seven-day week.

Can you imagine, what it would be like if a ten-day week had become popular? We would work eight or nine days and get only one or two days off. We would plan our schedules and weekly goals on ten days instead of seven; talk about a long week. By the time the weekend or our days off came around, we would not want to go back to work on Monday and the weekend would really be too short.

For more information on this subject see Why Are There Seven Days in a Week?.