Comment by Telemakhos
6 hours ago
Christianity gets its seven day period from Judaism, and it may well hearken back to Babylonian astronomy (seven planets, including the sun (Sunday) and moon (Monday)). The Romans, on the other hand, had an eight-day week with market days every eighth day (ninth counting inclusively, hence their name nundinae). In the middle ages, market towns had market days on fixed days of the week, every week, providing a commercial rhythm that had to give some rise to weekly consciousness before the twentieth century.
The week was an existing structure in Christian-based societies but not to the extent that it seems to have been the at the end of nineteenth-century versus the beginning, i.e., there is documentary evidence that people treated the 'seven day cycle' differently in 1800 versus 1899 (in the US):
> A substantial portion of the research [in the book] is based on nineteenth-century diaries, correspondence, and courtroom testimony to illustrate how ordinary Americans internalized weekly rhythms. The shift from almanacs, which organized dates by month, to preformatted diary books structured by the week reflected and reinforced changing temporal habits. The book examines diverse subjects including freed slaves, physicians, and children from elite families to demonstrate the breadth of weekly consciousness across social groups. […]