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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To reckon in nights is therefore the rule among the primitive Indo-European peoples, the Polynesians, and the inhabitants of North America. For Asia, which however is not so important for primitive time-reckoning on account of the old and far-reaching influence of civilisation in that continent, for Africa, and for S. America evidence is wanting or is forthcoming only in isolated instances. The reason probably is that in these continents also time is really reckoned in nights, and our informants have not noticed the agreement. This however is an argumentum ex silentio. Be that as it may, the fact remains that at least half the globe reckons the days in nights.

The current explanation of this striking fact is given by Schrader thus:—“Since the chronometer of primitive times is the moon and not the sun, the reason for counting in nights instead of days becomes almost self-evident”[33]. This statement is a priori not perfectly correct, inasmuch as there is and can have been no people that has not observed the daily course of the sun as well as the monthly phases of the moon: as chronometer neither of the two bodies is older than the other. The difference lies in the development of the time-reckoning. In point of fact an inner connection seems to exist between the counting of the days in nights and the designation of the days, or rather the nights, of the month according to the phases of the moon, to which we recur further on. Even such low races as the tribes of Central Australia already have names for the phases of the moon, from which they reckon time[34], but unfortunately we are not told how many. The Polynesians have very elaborately developed these, so that every day has its separate name. The Wagogos also use the phases of the moon as indications of time. The Arabs speak of ten phases of the moon, combining three days under each name. The Indians know the phases of the moon, but seem to have named and made use of them only roughly: the only tribe that possesses a list of the names of the days of the moon-month is the Kaigans[35], and unfortunately this list is incomplete. Moreover there are no indications that the primitive Indo-European peoples distinguished the phases of the moon otherwise than roughly. The finer distinction and nomenclature of the moon-phases, so that in the end each day comes to have its separate name, is clearly a very far advanced special development: the use of the word ‘night’ to express the period of 24 hours is much older. A causal connection, such as Schrader and others have maintained, must lie in the fact that the period of 24 hours is named after the phases of the moon and consequently the day itself is reckoned in nights. But this is only a comparatively isolated and advanced development, against which must be set the fact that the Indians and so primitive a people as the Australians use not the word ‘night’ but ‘sleep’, which has nothing to do with the moon.