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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Our task is now to make clear the nature of these discontinuous and pars pro toto time-indications, since from them proceeds, as order is ever evolved out of chaos, the continuous time-reckoning, the calendar.

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For primitive man the day is the simplest and most obvious unit of time. The variations of day and night, light and darkness, sleeping and waking penetrate at least as deeply into life as the changes following upon the course of the year, such as heat and cold, drought and rainy seasons, periods of famine and plenty. But for the primitive intellect the year is a very long period, and it is only with difficulty and at a later stage that it can be conceived and surveyed as a whole. Day and night, on the other hand, are short units which immediately become obvious. Their fusion into a single unit, the day of 24 hours, did not take place till later, for this unit as we employ it is abstract and numerical: the primitive intellect proceeds upon immediate perceptions and regards day and night separately.