When Did Humans Start Working 5 Days a Week?

Why do we work five days a week? Somewhere near you right now there is a calendar, and it has already decided what tomorrow is. Nobody asked you. In this video we find out who did: a Babylonian priest who was afraid of the moon, a people in exile who refused to let the moon reset their count, the Romans who ran an eight day week, an emperor who invented Sunday with one sentence, English weavers who took every Monday off for a hundred years, the half Saturday that was traded for it, the car maker who sold you the other half, and the economist who promised your grandparents a fifteen hour week by 2030. 0:00 A calendar decided your tomorrow 1:10 The camp with no days 2:12 The moon that almost fits 3:48 Rome names Monday, an emperor invents Sunday 5:07 The clock, Saint Monday and the half Saturday 6:48 Who gave you Saturday 8:56 Your week was decided People, places and sites mentioned: The Nuer of South Sudan (the cattle clock, recorded in the 1930s) · Babylon (the evil days of the lunar month) · the Judean exile and the Sabbath · the Roman nundinae (eight day market week) and the planetary week · Constantine's Sunday law of 321 · Saint Monday (England, 1760s to 1870s) · the Factory Act of 1850 · the first printed "week-end" (1879) · the New England mill of 1908 · Henry Ford's five day week (May 1926) · the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938, 40 hours by 1940) · John Maynard Keynes (1930) · the French Republican calendar (1793 to 1805) · the Soviet continuous week (1929 to 1940) · the UK four day week pilot (2022) Sources: ▸ Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1939), Africa: how the Nuer tell time by the herd and the moon, with no week. https://doi.org/10.2307/1155085 ▸ Lee, R. B. (1979), The !Kung San, and Sahlins, M. (1972), Stone Age Economics: how few hours food work took in surviving hunter gatherer groups. ▸ Zerubavel, E. (1985), The Seven Day Circle, Free Press: the history of the seven day week, Babylon's lunar days and the continuous Sabbath week. ▸ Expository Times (1896), the Babylonian "evil days" on the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st and 28th of the month. https://gospelstudies.org.uk/biblical... ▸ Bultrighini, I. (2018), UCL: the planetary week arriving in Italy and running beside the eight day market cycle. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint... ▸ Codex Justinianus 3.12.2 (321): Constantine's law resting courts and town workshops on the day of the Sun, farmers exempt. ▸ Schor, J. (1991), The Overworked American, Basic Books: the estimate that medieval holy days took about a third of the year. ▸ Thompson, E. P. (1967), Past & Present: how factory clocks turned time into money. https://doi.org/10.1093/past/38.1.56 ▸ Reid, D. A. (1976), Past & Present: the decline of Saint Monday, 1766 to 1876. https://doi.org/10.1093/past/71.1.76 ▸ Factory Act 1850 (13 & 14 Vict. c. 54): textile mills to stop at 2 pm on Saturday for women and children. ▸ Oxford English Dictionary, week-end: first recorded in the holiday sense in 1879. ▸ History.com, This Day in History, May 1, 1926: Ford puts factory workers on a five day, 40 hour week; Ford's interview in World's Work (October 1926) on leisure and buying. ▸ US Department of Labor: the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 44 hours falling to 40 hours in 1940. ▸ Keynes, J. M. (1930), Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, in Essays in Persuasion: the fifteen hour week by 2030. ▸ Autonomy (2023), The Results Are In: the UK four day week pilot, 61 companies, 56 continued. https://autonomy.work/portfolio/uk4dw... Some of these dates are debated by historians. Where they disagree, the video says so. #ancienthumans #history #workweek #weekend #monday #prehistory #archaeology #anthropology #humanhistory #explained #documentary #fourdayweek