The Number Twelve in Chinese an Western Culture

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Abstract Twelve is everywhere. It exists in mathematics and religion and theology;it appears in music and dramas ;it can be found in science ,and if you are careful enough ,you can catch it sleeping in the flag of the EU! As to culture, in which, whosever it is, you can feel its omnipresent existence without fail. But is anyone who has thought or is thinking the question –why twelve rather than ten or eleven? I am thinking the meaning that the number twelve has meant and is meaning in Chinese and western world, and that can serves as the reason for my picking this topic as my studying object. Keywords:twelve ,Chinese and western world ,omnipresent existence 摘 要 十二无处不在。数学、宗教、神话中有它,音乐、戏剧里有它,科学里有它。如果你足够细心,你甚至能在欧盟的旗帜里找到它的踪影!提到文化,无论在哪一种文化里,你都能感受到它无处不有的存在。但是,有没有人想过或正在想这样一个问题—为什么是十二,而不是十或者十一?我在想,数字十二在中西方文化中,扮演过以及正在扮演着怎样的角色?这便是我选这个课题作为研究学习目标的原因。 关键词:十二;中西方;无所不在的存在 1 The Number Twelve in Chinese Culture 1.1 in the Dating Methods Early in ancient China, our industrious forefathers were all lived on agriculture, an activity closely related to the nature, which means the intelligent ancient Chinese people must done something to facilitate their farming activities. Then had begun to observe the earth they lived on and the sky they lived under. Day in day out, they eventually found something about the changeable “sky” successfully ,namely, there was a “star”, the planet of Jupiter we called today, that can go back to the place it started twelve years ago. So when they began to have the sense of time and got the idea of recoding the trace of the time to facilitate their farming activities, they made the Dating Methods according to the trace of this “star” 1.1.1 in the Earthly Branch System As I mentioned above, our intelligent forefathers had made some Dating Methods to help their farming. One of

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