Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning. A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples онлайн

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For the investigation of primitive methods of time-reckoning no special astronomical or other technical knowledge is needed: in fact, such knowledge has rather played a fatal part by causing attention to be paid exclusively to the system of time-reckoning and leading to constant attempts to discover older and more primitive systems. A priori, indeed, we might venture to state that a system is always based upon previous data: unsystematic indications of time precede the system of time-reckoning. These modest beginnings have been obscured from view by the prejudice in favour of the systematic technical and astronomical chronology. The only absolutely necessary thing is a clear idea of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, i. e. the sun, the moon, and the most important of the fixed stars, and of the phases of the climate and the life of animals and plants, which give the units of the time-reckoning.

For a statement of the course and phases of the heavenly bodies and the units of the time-reckoning given by these I refer to the article mentioned in the preface, the pertinent sections of which are here quoted:—