The week—or something very like it—was probably the earliest of these artificial time clusters. Our English word “week” seems to come from an Old High German word meaning to change, or turn about (like the English “vicar” and the German Wechsel). But the week is no Western invention, nor has it everywhere been a cluster of seven days. Around the world, people have found at least fifteen different ways, in bunches of 5 to 10 days each, of clustering their days together. What is planet-wide is not any particular bouquet of days but the need and the desire to make some kind of bouquet. Mankind
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