History · Level 1 · 176 words

Why a Week Has Seven Days

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

A day is the earth turning once. A year is the earth going around the sun. A month is close to the moon's round of changes. These units come from the sky. You can see them.

A week is different. Nothing in nature takes exactly seven days. So where did the number come from? The answer goes back to ancient Babylon, more than three thousand years ago. Sky watchers there counted the lights that moved against the fixed stars. They found seven: the sun, the moon, and five points we now call planets. Seven moving lights, seven days.

The idea travelled. It reached Greece, then Rome, and Roman names for those lights became names for the days. Some of them are still in our week. Later, other peoples replaced some Roman names with their own gods, which is why the English days sound less Roman than the French or Spanish ones. The count of seven never changed. A week is not a piece of nature. It is a very old habit that we agreed to keep.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. What is the main idea of the passage?

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A. The seven-day week came from an old human count, not from nature.
The passage contrasts the day, month, and year, which come from the sky, with the week, which does not. It ends by saying a week is a very old habit we agreed to keep.

2. According to the passage, what did the sky watchers of Babylon count?

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C. Seven lights that moved against the fixed stars.
The text says they counted the lights that moved against the fixed stars and found seven: the sun, the moon, and five planets. The fixed stars are the background, not the count.

3. In this passage, "fixed" stars are stars that

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B. stay in the same place relative to each other
The moving lights are counted "against the fixed stars," so the fixed stars are the still background that makes the movement visible. Here "fixed" means not moving.

4. The passage suggests that English day names differ from French ones because

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D. some peoples swapped the Roman gods for gods of their own
The text says other peoples replaced some Roman names with their own gods, which is why English sounds less Roman. It also says the count of seven never changed anywhere.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.