The
ancient Etruscans, who inhabited the land the Italians do now, had an
eight day market week which they passed on to the Romans no later than
the sixth century B.C. As Rome expanded it encountered the seven day
week and for a time attempted to include both. But the coexistence of
two weekly cycles was unworkable. The popularity of the seven day rhythm
won out and the eight-day week disappeared forever. [4] Emperor
Constantine eventually established the seven day week in the Roman
calendar and in 321 A.D. set Sunday as the first day of the week. Apart
from the biblical record, historians have had difficulty placing the
precise beginning of the seven day week. It is simply acknowledged as an
ancient practice of very early origin in the evolution of civilization.
[5] The historical record becomes specific, however, with the
appearance of Israelite religion and culture. In the millennium before
Christ the distinctive of Israel's (and Judaism's) seven day week became
widely known. Its special seventh day devoted to worship and rest --
the Sabbath -- became an identity trademark that has endured to the
present. Jeremy Campbell, in his comprehensive inquiry into the human nature of time, jauntily titled Winston Churchill's Afternoon Nap, gives Israel full credit for introducing the seven day week: "In
all the ancient world, so far as is known, there was no seven day
calendar cycle except for the Jewish week, which existed at the very
beginning of the monarchical period in Israel [approximately 1000 B.C.]
and perhaps even earlier than that. A seven day week was unknown among
the ancient Greeks, whose holidays were held at very irregular
intervals, since they fell on the days of religious feasts in different
cities up and down the country."
Besides the
Israelite heptad, or seven day period, another tradition contributed to
the forming of our modern seven day week. Long before the Greeks,
Babylonian astronomers began to identify and name the seven heavenly
bodies (sun and moon included as "planets") which they observed moving
about the sky. Lacking our modern telescopes, they did not spot Uranus,
Neptune or Pluto. Neither did they name weekdays after those seven
"planets." Assigning planets to the days of the week is attributed to
the Egyptians. But once a planet became attached to a day, the seven day
"planetary week" came into existence. ". . . The
planetary week, however, was a relative newcomer compared with the
Jewish week. . . [and] may have evolved from [it], and was undoubtedly
influenced by it. Presumably the seven day structure of the Jewish week
came first, and later people began to call the days of the week after
the names of the planets. Our modern week is a blend of both
traditions." [6]
Zerubavel concludes that: "the
astrological seven day week, which evolved in Alexandria during the
second century B.C., was introduced to the West through Rome sometime
toward the end of the first century B.C. If it was Alexander the Great's
conquest of Greece, Babylonia, and Egypt that, in bringing those three
civilizations together, was indirectly responsible for the evolution of
the astrological week in the first place, it was Julius Caesar's
conquest of Egypt that, in making Rome heir to the glorious Hellenistic
heritage, was responsible for importing that oriental cycle to the
Occident." [7]
He also concludes that while the
Jewish and astrological weeks evolved independently, they were
eventually joined together by another power: ". . .
It was the Church that was responsible for integrating the Jewish and
astrological weeks together and spreading the seven day cycle throughout
most of the world. [8] Yet Christianity was by no means the only
carrier that helped spread the Jewish week around the globe. Starting
from the seventh century, Islam was responsible for importing this seven
day cycle to the east coast of Africa, the Sudan, Central Asia, large
parts of North and West Africa, and even as far as to the Malay
peninsula and parts of Indonesia." [9] Both
Christianity and Islam inherited the seven day week from the Jews. Both
established worship days separate from the Jews: Sunday for the
Christians, Friday for the Moslems -- both days touching the original
Sabbath. These three religions with their three worship days clustering
together have played key historical roles in bringing the beat of a
seven day week to all the world. What were the seven day wars? [10] Because
of the bond between religion (Christianity especially) and the week,
there have been two major attempts in modern times to obliterate the
seven day week in favor of a different length week. The first attempt
came in the late 1700s. The humanistic French Revolution promised the
people a new Age of Reason to replace regressive religious
superstitions. A new secular, "rational" week of ten days was devised
and approved by the ruling Convention in October, 1793. [11] The ten-day
"decade" was patterned after the decimal principle, having ten days
divided into ten hours, of 100 minutes each with each minute divided
into l00 decimal seconds. Every tenth day, the "decadi" was reserved for
rest and celebration of various natural objects and abstract ideas.
Notre Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason. "The real target of the reform campaign," notes Zerubavel, "was
the Christian [Church]. . . and from a symbolic standpoint, the
abolition of the seven day 'beat' expressed the wish to de-Christianize
France far more than the attempt to make life there more 'rational.'"
[12]
During the Reign of Terror the ten-day "decade"
was imposed by force. Churches were closed and allowed to open only on
the tenth day. People were even forbidden to wear their good clothing on
the traditional Sunday, with severe fines and even jail sentences given
to violators. Religion, however, proved too resilient and the attempt
to destroy the seven day week (1793-1805) failed completely - as did the
First Republic of France. Not learning a thing from France's
failure, the Communists ruling the Russian Revolution tried a second,
even more radical experiment 140 years later. Their aim was the same:
abolish religion by abolishing the seven day week. The Soviet scene was a
five-day continuous work week which called for 80 percent of workers to
be on the job on any given day -- a plan which left 20 percent to share
a day off. There was no longer a national day off. The advertised
reason for the new rotating five-day week was to increase production. After
eleven years of disappointing production and epidemic irresponsibility
in the work place (1929-1940) Stalin called it quits and gave the Soviet
people back their seven day week. Concludes Zerubavel, "In
both France and the Soviet Union, some desperate attempts were made by
two of the most ruthless totalitarian regimes in history to completely
destroy the Judeo-Christian, seven day week. In both societies, to this
day, it still remains the dominant 'beat' of social life." [13] Did Culture or Biology come first? In
light of these massive failures, we must face the question "why seven?"
Since the seven day cycle is not a naturally occurring event in our
external environment, can culture alone explain how a whole society six
billion strong now beats to a seven day rhythm? Tracking the
development of the seven day week in human events, as we have briefly
summarized above, has been a far easier task for historians than
explaining how the cycle originated in the first place. Researchers
really have only two choices: Say that the week is a
cultural or religious invention of unknown date which gradually took
root in the ancient world, evolving with time to the near universal
acceptance we find today Take the biblical record of the
origin of the week (Genesis, chapters 1 & 2) at face value -- it
was made by God at creation.
For convenience we may
call option one -- a standard, textbook explanation -- "the
cultural/religious outgrowth model;" option two naturally becomes "the
biblical model." It comes as no surprise that most modern historians
reject the second, or biblical model, and spend their ink documenting
the first one, attempting to explain the strange phenomenon of a seven
day week. However one rates those attempts, recent discoveries
revealing innate body rhythms of about seven days now call that cultural
outgrowth model into question. The relatively new science of
chronobiology has uncovered some totally unexpected facts about living
things, as Susan Perry and Jim Dawson report in their book The Secrets Our Body Clock Reveal.
Weekly rhythms -- known in chronobiology as "circaseptan rhythms" --
are one of the most puzzling and fascinating findings of chronobiology.
Circaseptan literally means "about seven." Daily and seasonal cycles
appear to be connected to the moon. But what is there in nature that
would have caused weekly rhythms to evolve? "At first
glance, it might seem that weekly rhythms developed in response to the
seven day week imposed by human culture thousands of years ago. However,
this theory doesn't hold once you realize that plants, insects, and
animals other than humans also have weekly cycles. . . . Biology,
therefore, not culture, is probably at the source of our seven day
week." [14]
Campbell summarizes the findings of the world's foremost authority on rhythms and the pioneer of the science of chronobiology: "Franz
Halberg proposes that body rhythms of about seven days, far from being
passively driven by the social cycle of the calendar week, are innate,
autonomous, and perhaps the reason why the calendar week arose in the
first place." [15]
What a bombshell! What are the rhythms around us? Mankind
has always been aware of rhythms -- they surround us. We live with
daily rhythms of tides, light and darkness, monthly rhythms of the moon,
seasonal rhythms of birth, growth, harvest, hot and cold, and annual
cycles of the sun, migrations, floods and drought. We have also observed
cycles in our bodies which interact with those around us such as our
daily sleep rhythms, daily temperature and blood pressure fluctuations,
and the menstrual cycle which follows the lunar cycle precisely
averaging 29.5 days. However, until recently science has been
aware of only the more obvious rhythms. Now the new science of
chronobiology has begun to roll back frontiers revealing a universe
replete with rhythms. Franz Halberg, the brilliant scientist and
founder of modern chronobiology, first began his experiments in the
1940s and now heads the Chronobiology Laboratories at the University of
Minnesota. He offers us this rather detailed description of his field: "Chronobiology
is the eminently interdisciplinary science of interactions in time
among metabolic, hormonal, and neuronal networks. It involves anatomy,
biochemistry, microbiology, physiology, and pharmacology, at the
molecular, intracellular, intercellular, and still higher levels of
organization. The compounds coordinating a time structure -- proteins,
steroids, and amino-acid derivatives -- provide for the scheduling of
interactions among membrane, cytoplasmic, and nuclear events in a
network involving rhythmic enzyme reactions and other intracellular
mechanisms. The integrated temporal features of the processes of
induction, repression, transcription, and translation of gene expression
remain to be mapped . . ." [16] Simply put: Chronobiology is the study of how living things handle time. Chronobiology is no longer a minor science. Perry and Dawson note that it ".
. . is now being studied in major universities and medical centers
around the world. There are chronobiologists working for the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as for the National
Institutes of Health and other government laboratories. Chronobiology
is becoming part of the mainstream of science, and it is changing our
way of looking at life and time." [17] "Don't
confuse the science of biological rhythms with the quackery of
biorhythms," warn Perry and Dawson. "The two are as unlike each other as
astronomy and astrology." [18] What are the human body's five major rhythms? There
are five major rhythms that beat in our bodies to insure our health and
happiness (see chart below). The daily or circadian rhythm (from the
Latin for "around a day") is the easiest to detect and measure. We are
born with our own set of circadian rhythms that in time become
synchronized with our environment. Our rhythms vary slightly from
individual to individual (23.6 hours, 24.3 hours, 25.4 hours, etc.) and
they usually shorten as we age. For some unknown reason, women tend to
have shorter circadian cycles than men. Your Inner Rhythms | | | | | | | Type of Rhythm | Length | | Examples | | Ultradian | Less than
24 hours | | Heartbeat. 90 minute fluctuations in energy levels and attention span. Brain waves. | | | | | | | Circadian | About a day | | Temperature. Blood Pressure. Sleep and Wake Cycle. Cell Division. | | | | | | | Circaseptan | About a week | | Reject
of organ transplants. Immune response to infections. Blood and Urine
chemicals. Blood Pressure. Heartbeat. Common Cold. Coping hormones. | | | | | | | Circatrigintan | About a month | | Menstrual cycle | | | | | | | Circannual | About a year | | Seasonal depression. Sexual drive. Susceptibility to some diseases. | If
all our individual cycles vary from a precise 24 hour day or 168 hour
seven day week, wouldn't we in time get terribly out of sync? "Fortunately," writes Perry and Dawson, "our
bodies are able to reset themselves each day to the twenty-four hour
rhythm, thanks to many powerful time cues. Chronobiologists call these
cues zeitgebers, German for 'time givers.' Some can be found
outside our bodies, some are located within, and others are part of our
daily lives . . . . "As if we didn't have enough zeitgebers
to keep our bodies in sync with the world, our internal rhythms also
help synchronize each other, for none of the myriad rhythms within our
bodies works in isolation. Some rhythms rise while others fall -- like a
modern dance in which the dancers move seemingly independently of each
other, but which actually has been carefully choreographed. The dance is
so complex that chronobiologists are only beginning to understand the
interrelationships of the rhythms." [19]
What are the mysterious weekly rhythms?The
most intriguing of all biological rhythms are those set to a clock of
about 7 days. In his chapter "The Importance of Time," Jeremy Campbell
reports: "These circaseptan, or about weekly, rhythms
are one of the major surprises turned up by modern chronobiology.
Fifteen years ago, few scientists would have expected that seven day
biological cycles would prove to be so widespread and so long
established in the living world. They are of very ancient origin,
appearing in primitive one-celled organisms, and are thought to be
present even in bacteria, the simplest form of life now existing." [20] One
of Franz Halberg's amazing discoveries is that of an innate rhythm --
about seven days -- occurring in a giant alga some five million years
old on the evolutionary time line. Because this microscopic cell
resembles a graceful champagne glass, the alga (plant) is popularly
known as mermaid's wineglass (Acetabularia mediterranea). When this
"primitive" alga is subjected to artificial schedules of alternating
light and dark spans of varying length over many days, this single
intact cell is somehow able to translate all that manipulation of light
and darkness into the measurement of a seven day week! As Campbell
says, this inherent rhythm has to do with the internal logic of the
body, not with the external logic of the world. Many more examples could
be given. Involved experimentation with rats, face flies, plants and
other life have revealed circaseptan rhythms similar to that of the
mermaid's wineglass. [21] If the seven day week is an invention
of culture and religion, as most historians would have us believe, how
do we explain innate circaseptan rhythms in "primitive" algae, rats,
plants and face flies? These forms of life have no calendar, can't read
the Torah and don't know Saturn from Santa Claus. Is our modern seven day cycle a JEWISH invention? In his book The Seven Day Circle, Eviatar Zerubavel plainly states: "the
continuous seven day cycle that runs throughout history paying no
attention whatsoever to the moon and its phases is a distinctively
Jewish invention." [22]
Modern attempts by the French
and Soviets to erase the seven day week -- with its imbedded religious
ties -- ended in complete failure. But was it culture and
religion alone that eventually moved earth's six billion people to now
harmonize in a universal seven day rhythm? The new and respected science
of chronobiology (the study of how living things handle time) says no.
Its discovery of circaseptan ("about seven") rhythms in human and other
life forms points toward a biological explanation for the mystery of the
week. In his study into the human nature of time, Jeremy Campbell
states: "Inner time structure, in certain of its
manifestations, seems to determine outer time structure, rather than the
other way round. Rhythms of about seven days arose in living creatures
millions of years before the calendar week was invented, and may
conceivably be the reason why it was invented." [23] Is the human body an orchestra of rhythms?Chronobiology
is continuing to document just how highly rhythmic we humans are. Most
of our many ticking clocks are difficult to detect; they operate just
below our conscious awareness. Innate and hidden in our cell structure,
the mysteries of biological time have waited for the resolving power of
modern computers to appear. Just as the electron microscope allowed
scientists to peer deep into the structure of living cells, computer
"magnification" and analysis now make visible internal clocks we didn't
even know existed. The most surprising of them all is the circaseptan.
Campbell explains that: "certain biological clock
systems have been discovered only through the use of sophisticated
computer programs, and when they are brought to light in this way, often
surprise us. By showing us these invisible restrictions on our temporal
freedom, scientists modify our knowledge of human nature, and they do
not always do so in predictable ways. They are drawing a new map of the
temporal anatomy of body and brain, and the map tells us truths we could
not know otherwise." "It would be a big mistake to assume that this
time anatomy is simple, that the clocks of the body all tick to a
single measure, like watches in a jewelry store. A better image is that
of an orchestra, a silent orchestra made up of numerous players under
more than one conductor, each contributing in special ways to the
harmony and complexity of the whole." [24]
These myriad
synchronizing rhythms give substance to the well worn phrase "harmony of
the body." The "loudest" of the body's oscillating frequencies is the
24-hour cosmic cycle of day and night -- and until recently this
circadian rhythm received most of the attention. The surprise
appearance of an internally generated seven day rhythm, independent from
all environmental influences, provides chronobiologists with intriguing
possibilities for a new understanding of how the body's complex
orchestra of rhythms works. Our bodies are carefully designed for
self-protection even in matters of time. On the one hand we are an
orchestra of rhythms, on the other our bodies demand stability and
sameness -- an automatic pull to homeostasis (the maintenance of a
beneficial equilibrium, a self-regulated norm). Campbell explains:
"The two regulatory systems, one imposing sameness in time, the other
providing orderly change, are complementary rather than being in
conflict. A body function alters in a rhythmic fashion, and homeostasis
stabilizes the altered state of that function."The clocks are able to
generate regular periodic variations because homeostasis resists
random, irrelevant variations. Both systems collaborate in maintaining
the special time structure of the body rather than simply surrendering
to the time structure of the environment." [25] We organize time on our own terms and to our own advantage. Most,
if not all, of the millions (literally!) of daily functions that occur
in our bodies are organized within some rhythmic system. Some bodily
tasks occur quickly in seconds, minutes or hours, others slowly over
months. How can this orchestra of cycles governing such bodily
activities as diverse in time as metabolism, maintenance, growth,
defense and reproduction possibly be coordinated? What is our internal seven day clock?What is our internal 7 day clock? Chronobiology has found the answer. As Campbell explains:
"A particular function of the body may have a spectrum of rhythms with a
dominant frequency that is very different from the dominant frequency
of the spectrum of rhythms in another function, perhaps widely separated
in space. Yet no matter which frequency component is the primary one in
any given function, all rhythmic systems of the body probably possess
an innate circaseptan frequency so that when they cooperate to perform a
specific task which is body-wide, say, an immune reaction, the reaction
occurs on a weekly schedule. "That schedule is a compromise between
too much time and too little. A day and a night, which is the dominant
frequency in the spectrum of many routine body chores, would not be long
enough to complete the complicated array of chemical and other
activities that compose the immune defense reaction, and a month would
be too long." [26] In addition to being the key
coordinating rhythm for the rest of the body's many rhythmic
interactions, a seven day cycle has been found in fluctuations of blood
pressure, acid content in blood, red blood cells, heartbeat, oral
temperature, female breast temperature, urine chemistry and volume, the
ratio between two important neurotransmitters, norepinephrine and
epinephrine, and the rise and fall of several body chemicals such as the
stress coping hormone, cortisol. "In fact," Perry and Dawson note, "weekly
rhythms appear easiest to detect when the body is under stress, such as
when it is defending itself against a virus, bacterium, or other
harmful intruder. For example, cold symptoms (which are really signs of
the body defending itself against the cold virus) last about a week.
Chickenpox symptoms (a high fever and small red spots) usually appear
almost exactly two weeks after exposure to the illness.:" [27] Doctors
have long observed that response to malaria infection and pneumonia
crisis peaked at seven days. Organ transplants face similar crises as
the body's immune system attack the foreign organ. Campbell explains: "When
a human patient receives a kidney transplant, there is a rhythm of
about seven days, a predictable rise and fall in the probability that
the body's immune system will reject the new kidney. A major peak of
rejection occurs seven days after the operation, and when a serum is
given to suppress the immune reaction, a series of peaks occurs, with
increasing risk of rejection, at one week, two weeks, three weeks and at
four weeks, the time of the highest of all." [28] Chronobiology's
pioneer, Dr. Franz Halberg, made another startling discovery -- a three
and a half day, or circasemiseptan harmonic of the circaseptan (seven
day) frequency. This phenomenon seems to occur when the living organism
is under extreme attack or has somehow been critically altered. When the
giant one celled alga "mermaid's wineglass" (described in Part One) had
its nucleus removed, it doubled its seven day frequency to one of about
three and a half days. [29] He has also found that when cancer
strikes humans our circaseptan frequency is doubled to its
circasemiseptan harmonic. Why? Campbell believes there must be rhyme and
reason: "Circaseptan and circasemiseptan rhythms are
not arbitrary, even though they seem to lack counterpart rhythms in the
external environment." Dr. Halberg calls the move to a three and a half
day harmonic of seven a "spectral compromise . . . the system does its
own reshuffling." [30] The deeper we investigate the
inner workings of life, an even more complex, intricate and absolutely
marvelous display of design begins to appear. Out of the mind-numbing
complexity of life a certain organizing rhythm starts to surface. The
millions of living parts begin to respond to a rhythmic resonance
broadcast on certain set frequencies. These parts innately know to tune
their receivers to the proper sympathetically vibrating frequency --
their beat. Just as we tune our radios and music suddenly springs to
life, every living cell has imbedded in its primal genetic material a
rhythm, a clock, a beat, a frequency, a resonance that helps it get in
sync to live and function as designed. Now we discover that the beat all life is tuned to is seven. "In Franz Halberg's view," summarizes Campbell: "a
central feature of biological time structure is the harmonic
relationship that exists among the various component frequencies. A
striking aspect of this relationship is that the components themselves
appear to be harmonics or sub harmonics, multiples or submultiples, of
seven, a number that has played a disproportionately large role in human
culture, myth, religion, magic and the calendar." [31]
How did seven come to be imbedded deep into the ancient genetic
building blocks of life? Why is seven the key coordinating rhythm for
life's myriad complexities? | 
