How far can civilization go without inventing the calendar?
While only counting seasons and years, but not weeks or months, how far can human civilization progress?
Can they reach the middle ages?
Or is the invention of the calendar such a cornerstone of civilization that it is inevitable for it to exist?
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1 answer
As far as you like, the calendar is not that important.
It also depends on what counts as a calendar!
The reason the constellations tend to not look anything like a description of their names, without an awful lot of artistic liberty being taken, is they were actually used as a calender to indicate upcoming events on Earth. Aries the Ram is basically a triangle, but in ancient times indicated something about sheep herding (I think it was the time to mate sheep; let the Ram loose).
Similarly for harvest time, monsoons and other seasonal things. Time could easily be measured by full-moon to full-moon, and corrected by very reliable constellations, without ever worrying about days.
If by "calendar" you mean a day-by-day calendar, I don't think that is really necessary at all, not even in modern times. We currently celebrate various holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, etc on different days of the year all the time, without this causing any hassle. The days we pick are culturally determined, but could just as easily be fixed to various celestial or natural events that may vary year to year.
You really don't even need a clock; other than sunrise and sunset. Even much industrial work and schooling could easily be by quota. Finish your 1000 pieces and you can go home. Things that require teamwork could be timed relative to sunrise, noon, and sunset; all of which people are trained to recognize. You show up at sunrise, work together until X is done, then go home. Likewise, the idea of weekends and days off is a recent development; it certainly isn't a requirement for an advanced society. Many professionals like doctors and lawyers and authors will work 7 days a week and take time off in bigger chunks; they don't need more than the phases of the moon for timing: The moon is around three quarters, I'll return when it is full.
An obsessions with the calendar and making specific days for specific purposes is an artifact of our culture, not something absolutely necessary for an advanced society. Most actual inventors of technology were not on a schedule to invent something, they were on an open schedule, fooling around with ideas as they came to them, and one day came across something interesting. Edison, famously, had no idea how long it would take to find a good filament substance for the light bulb.
That is what technology is based upon, not strict schedules at all, by clock or calendar.
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