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Gorean Book Quote Requests
Requests 1-173 were asked and answered back when there were only 25 books.
Also, some of the early questions were unintentionally truncated and cannot be restored. However, the answers are shown in their totality.
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| Q # | Question |
| 248 | I am searching for the way the nomads counted years. They did not use the Gorean calendar but the breed of bosk and other ways. Can you tell me what the years or months were?
Hanna
Answer
The 15 months of the Wagon Peoples are based on the 15 types of bosk. But the types of bosk are not identified so there is no way to know the names of the months.
The years actually vary in length. And they do not even call the current year by number but instead name the years based on a significant event that happened. They also do not write down these names, preferring instead to commit them to memory. The names are remembered by the Year Keepers and some can recall the names of several thousand years in chronological order.
We do know the name of two of the years:
The Year in which Tarl Cabot Came to the Wagon Peoples
The Year in which Tarl Cabot Commanded a Thousand
A consequence of the chronological conventions of the Wagon Peoples, of course, is that their years tend to vary in length, but this fact, which might bother us, does not bother them, any more than the fact that some men and some animals live longer than others; the women of the Wagon Peoples, incidentally, keep a calendar based on the phases of Gor's largest moon, but this is a calendar of fifteen moons, named for the fifteen varieties of bosk, and functions independently of the tallying of years by snows; for example, the Moon of the Brown Bosk may at one time occur in the winter, at another time, years later, in the summer; this calendar is kept by a set of colored pegs set in the sides of some wagons, on one of which, depending on the moon, a round, wooden plate bearing the image of a bosk is fixed. The years, incidentally, are not numbered by the Wagon Peoples, but given names, toward their end, based on something or other which has occurred to distinguish the year. The year names are kept in living memory by the Year Keepers, some of whom can recall the names of several thousand consecutive years. The Wagon Peoples do not trust important matters, such as year names, to paper or parchment, subject to theft, insect and rodent damage, deterioration, etc. Most of those of the Wagon Peoples have excellent memories, trained from birth. Few can read, though some can, perhaps having acquired the skill far from the wagons, perhaps from merchants or tradesmen. The Wagon Peoples, as might be expected, have a large and complex oral literature. This is kept by and occasionally, in parts, recited by the Camp Singers.
Nomads of Gor    Book 4    Page 12
"Your coming and going with the Wagon Peoples," said Kamchak, "has spanned parts of two of our years."
I looked at him, not really understanding. What he said, of course, was true.
"The years," said Harold, smiling, "were two the Year in which Tarl Cabot Came to the Wagon Peoples and the Year in which Tarl Cabot Commanded a Thousand."
Nomads of Gor    Book 4    Page 343
https://www.thegoreancave.com/tmm/years.php
https://www.thegoreancave.com/tmm/chronology.php
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