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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It must be granted as a premise to our investigation that when we speak of ‘seasons’ not only the larger divisions of the year are to be understood by the word—those which alone of all the natural epochs of the year are current among us to-day—but also smaller divisions which might perhaps be called seasonal points; for instance the times of cherry-blossoming and hop-picking are also seasons. Such short—often very short—seasons are not distinguished in any important feature from the longer: the difference only arises from the longer or shorter duration of the phenomena in question. The Hidatsa Indians describe any period thus marked by a natural occurrence, be it long or short, the hot season or the season of strawberries, by the same word, kadu, ‘season’, ‘time’ (of the occurrence), and the longer seasons include shorter[198].

We begin with these shorter seasons since they are more foreign to us: to primitive man however they are of extreme importance, since in the absence of a regular calendar they afford the only means he knows of determining the shortest periods of the natural year, in so far as they are connected with this. A time-determination of this nature is important not so much for giving the date of any occurrence as for establishing beforehand the time of certain occupations, e. g. sowing or a festival.