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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We return to the primitive peoples and give first a few examples in which a natural phenomenon serves as the sign of the beginning of one of the longer divisions of the year or of some occupation, generally agriculture. Of the Bushmen we are told that they paid particular attention to the time at which the first thunder-storm broke. They hailed it with great joy since they counted it a sure sign that summer had commenced. In the midst of their excessive rejoicing they tore in pieces their garments of skins, threw them into the air, and danced for several nights in succession. The Garieb Bushmen made great outcries accompanied with dancing and playing upon their drums[207]. The Banyankole of Uganda used the euphorbia trees to guide them as to the nearness of the rainy season: when these trees began to shoot out new growth they knew that the rains were near[208]. The Indians of the Orinoco took great pains to determine the approach of the rainy season, as Gilij relates in a chapter entitled: De segni, che precedon l’inverno[209]. The signs were:—The scream of the Araguato monkeys at midnight or at the approach of day; the sudden bursting into blossom of certain trees; the swelling of the brooks, which almost dry up in summer but swell a few days before the rainy season; the yams which in summer have lost their leaves suddenly grow green again when the rainy season is at hand; finally the heliacal setting of the Pleiades. The tribe of the Bigambul in S. E. Australia reckon the seasons from the blossoming of certain trees. Yerra, for example, is the name of a tree that blossoms in September: this time of the year is therefore called yerrabinda. The apple-tree blossoms at Christmas time, which is called nigabinda. The iron-bark tree blossoms about the end of January, and this time is called wobinda. The height of summer however is named by them ‘the time when the ground burns the feet’: at this time no trees blossom[210]. The natives of New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago) determine the planting-season from the buds of certain trees and from the position of certain stars[211]. In Alu (Solomon Islands) one division of the year is determined from the bloom on the almond, another from the Pleiades[212]. The time for the sun-dance of the Kiowa Indians is determined by the whitening of the down on the cotton-plant[213]. One of the annual festivals of the Society Islands is regulated by the blossoming of the reed[214].