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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The phases of the climate and of plant and animal life cannot be particularly described, since they naturally vary so much in different countries. It can only be remarked that though they depend upon the course of the sun, yet in certain cases, owing to the special climatic conditions of the individual years, they may be to some extent advanced or retarded, and further that the climatic phenomena of many parts of the earth, especially in the Tropics but also in the Mediterranean countries, recur with a far greater regularity than in our northern climes, which are subject to such uncertain weather. Instances are the trade-winds and monsoons, the dry and the rainy seasons.

Upon the above-mentioned units the system of time-reckoning will be based. The days are joined into months and the months into years; only more rarely are the seasons interposed as regular units of time. The system is like a chain the links of which run into one another without gaps: each link is equivalent, or as nearly as possible equivalent, to every other link of the same class, and therefore need only be given a name and counted, not necessarily conceived in the concrete, although this is not excluded. This is the only genuine system, a system of continuous time-reckoning, which excludes all gaps in the chain and all links of indeterminate length. The relation between the larger and the smaller units may be treated in various ways, chiefly on account of the fact that the smaller units do not divide exactly into the larger. Sometimes the smaller units may be fitted into the larger as subdivisions of the latter, so that they constitute the links of the chain formed by the larger unit. The inequality referred to shews then that the units vary to some extent in number or size (year of 365 or 366 days, of 12 or 13 lunar months, lunar month of 29 or 30 days). In that case the beginnings of the larger unit and of the first of the smaller units coincide. Thus in our year New Year’s Day and the first day of the first month coincide, but the length of the months varies somewhat. This is an inheritance from the lunisolar year, in which also New Year’s Day and the first day of the first month coincided and the length of the month varied between 29 and 30 days, but in addition the year varied between 12 and 13 months. This mode of reckoning, in which the smaller units are contained in the larger as subdivisions of them, will be termed the fixed method.