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

32 страница из 76

There is only one means of accurately indicating the times of night, and that is by the observation of the stars. Many peoples judge from the position of the morning-star the time that has yet to elapse before sunrise: but this cannot always be done, and in any case the method is only of use in the early morning. But the fixed stars are always there. The difficulty however arises that every day the stars gain about four minutes on the sun; the stars must therefore be accurately known, and the observer must either be acquainted with their positions at definite times of the year or else be constantly choosing a new star as his chronometer. Not many peoples have got so far as that. Although the science of astronomy was very well developed among the Polynesians, we are told of the Tahitians that to distinguish the hours of night by means of the stars was a science with which very few of them were acquainted[181]. On the Society Islands the advance of night was determined from the stars[182]; and so in Hawaii, with as great accuracy as the hours of the day from the sun[183]. “When the Milky Way passes the meridian and inclines to the west, people (in Hawaii) say ‘the fish has turned’”[184]. Among the Indians of South America the knowledge of the stars is very wide-spread. E. Nordenskjöld, who visited the border districts where Brazil, Bolivia, and the Argentine meet, says repeatedly that the stellar heavens are the Indian’s clock and compass. When sitting in their huts they can, without looking out, indicate the positions of the more important constellations in the sky. If one is out with an Indian at night he will point to Orion or some other constellation and shew how far it will have moved on before the end of the journey is reached[185]. The Eskimos of Greenland, when it is dark, indicate the time from nelarsik (Vega)[186], or from the Pleiades[187]. Among them the observation of the stars is uncommonly well developed. The Lapps, who have to tend their reindeer during the long winter nights, determine the course of time by certain stars. Sarvon is the largest star in the heavens: when in winter it stands in the middle of the sky it marks midnight; it is called the night-clock of the Lapps. The Great Dog, the Old Man, and the Old Woman are three stars that pursue sarva. They rise when the people go to sleep, and set a little before daybreak. They ascend the heavens obliquely in front of sarva, in the morning they dip downwards. Another authority states that sarva is the Great Bear; the first couple of stars in it are the Old Man and the Old Woman, the second the Dog and the Elk. The reindeer herdsman decides from it how far night is advanced, and when he may expect to be relieved. Lovosj or suttjenes is the name given to the Pleiades. The constellation indicates midnight, when the weather is good. A fable tells how this constellation saved a servant who had been driven out by his master into the great cold of a winter night. The young men wish the maidens to tend the reindeer by night and say:—“Go and kiss the suttjenes young men”, but the maidens answer:—“Go yourselves and kiss the suttjenes maidens”[188]. Of the old Icelanders Kålund writes:—“At night the moon and certain stars, especially the Pleiades, afford them the same aid” (i. e. as the signs of day)[189]. The Homeric Greeks—at least in a general fashion—also judged of the advance of night by the position of the stars[190]. This more accurate method is therefore peculiar to a few primitive peoples specially gifted in astronomy.