Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning - Martin P. Nilsson - Страница 6

The Latin expressions I merely copy from Censorinus, Ch. 24, and insert in brackets the additions made by Macrob., Sat. I, 3, 16 ff. Tempus quod huic—i. e. nox media—proximum est vocatur de media nocte (media noctis inclinatio), sequitur gallicinium, cum galli canere incipiunt, dein conticinium, cum conticuerunt; tunc ante lucem, et sic diluculum, cum sole nondum orto iam lucet. Secundum diluculum vocatur mane cum lux videtur sole orto, post hoc ad meridiem, tunc meridies, quod est medii diei nomen, inde de meridie (inde—i. e. a meridie—tempus occiduum), hinc suprema ... post supremam sequitur vespera ante ortum scilicet—this must be before the appearance of the star—eius stellae, quam Plautus vesperuginem ... appellat. There are also ortus and occasus solis, crepusculum. This terminology is poor and applies almost exclusively to the daylight. In ancient Rome the edifices of the Forum are said to have served as sun-dials. A servant of the consul proclaimed noon “when the sun peeped between the Rostra and the Graecostasis; when the sun sank from the Maenian column to the prison he proclaimed evening, but only on clear days”[150]. With the advance of civilisation the Greek terms for the twelve hours of the day, each of which varied in length according to the time of the year, became customary, a fact which is connected with the spread of sun- and water-clocks[151]. Hence arises in the Middle Ages the terminology derived from the daily mass (hora canonica)[152]. In daily life there was often a recurrence to primitive methods. I borrow a few examples of a quite primitive character from the early medieval tract Peregrinatio Aetheriae:—‘the hour when people can recognise each other’[153], ‘when the crow of cocks begins’[154], ‘from the first cock-crow’[155], etc., but also hora tertia, quinta, sexta (noon).

An obviously isolated method is the determination of the times of day from the daily twice-recurring ebb and flow of the tides; the method is also very unsuitable, since the period of a complete tide is 12 hours 25 minutes, so that the two periods together exceed the day by nearly an hour. In fact the Eskimos of Greenland are the only people who reckon by the tides. They divide up the day according to ebb and flow, although they must always reckon differently on account of the variations of the moon[156]. Dalsager[157] also points this out and remarks that their reckoning cannot last for two consecutive days, so that they have to make a fresh division every day. The rudiments of this method are however seen among some of the tribes of Polynesia. Immediately after the above-quoted divisions of the day among the Society Islanders are mentioned “the longer periods before noon and midnight during which the sea rises, and the others following these, in which it falls”[158], and “night or the light quite gone, when the sea begins to flow towards the land, about 11 at night”[159]. The Hawaiians called the rising of the tide by such names as the rising, big, full, and surrounding sea; when the water neither rose nor fell it was called the standing sea; the ebbing sea they spoke of as the parted, retiring, and defeated sea[160].

The night is the time of complete darkness and rest, and therefore the frequently mentioned expression, ‘sleeping-time’, corresponds to night. Seldom is the whole time during which the sun remains below the horizon to be understood by it. On the Society Islands there were two expressions for day according to its extension from morning to evening twilight or from sunrise to sunset[161]. The Hawaiian judge, Fornander, follows this mode of speech when he distinguishes five periods of night, (1) about sunset, (2) between sunset and midnight, (3) midnight, (4) between midnight and sunrise, and (5) sunrise[162]. For the times between sunset and night-fall and between night and sunrise there is a rich terminology which has already been illustrated. During the night itself time-indications are for obvious reasons scanty. Often the only point distinguished is midnight, e. g. by the Kiowa[163], the Masai[164], the Shilluk[165]; ‘the silence of the land’ among the Babwende[166], ‘the back of night’ among the Hottentots[167], ‘the time of sleep’ among the Hawaiians[168]. Hence arises of itself a threefold division in which the periods of night before and after midnight are distinguished, as e. g. by the Hawaiians[169]. The usual method is to start from the day, i. e. the limit of the day, and then to proceed on both sides in the direction of midnight, as in the late evening of the Hottentots, which extends till long after sunset[170], and the ‘not yet early’ and the tara (beginning at dusk and extending till the time of rest) among the Masai[171], etc. The Tahitians are credited with six divisions of the day and as many of the night, this more accurate division of night being of course determined by the stars[172]; the only expressions reported however are those for midnight and the time from midnight to daybreak[173]. On the Marquesas Islands the first night-watch was ‘the hour of ghosts’; the advanced night was termed ‘black night’, and midnight ‘great sleep’; the last watch of night was ‘the coming of day’[174]. The Wadschagga have three night watches:—the awakening in the evening, that in the middle (midnight), and that in the morning twilight[175]. The Javanese have night, midnight, and waning of night[176]. Where the cock is kept, its crow serves as a sign that the night is drawing to an end, as for instance among the Swahili[177], and in the Dutch Indies[178]; the Yoruba distinguish other cock-crowings, such as ‘the cock opening the way’, i. e. the first cock-crowing, ‘the time of the cock-crowing immediately before sunset’[179]. Quite exceptional however is the device ascribed to the inhabitants of the New Hebrides. In order to denote the hours of the night they make a gesture in the direction of the spot where the sun would be at the corresponding hour of day[180].

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.

From the investigation of the modes of naming and reckoning the day and its parts it follows for primitive time-reckoning in general that the time-indications refer to concrete phenomena, and therefore either they indicate a point of time or, if they are related to periods, these periods are of different and fluctuating length. They are accordingly of no use in calculating, they cannot simply be added together even when a number of such periods together make up the period of a complete day, i. e. they are fundamentally discontinuous. When several days are to be counted the pars pro toto method is used: instead of the whole day a part is counted. Within the day two phenomena chiefly recur with such unfailing constancy as to be of use in counting: they are the daily reviving sun and the night or sleeping-time. The word for sun is often the same as that for day. Within the day fall a number of occupations which chiefly turn the attention to its length and varying phenomena, and this is the case also with the sun itself, for the varying position of the sun in the heavens affords the most usual mode of indicating the time of day. For the counting a point of time is best suited, or, which comes to the same thing, a unit without subdivisions, a blank period. This is the reason why the counting by ‘sleeps’ or nights predominates. On the same grounds the quite isolated pars pro toto counting of the days from the dawns in Homer may be explained. To indicate the duration of time primitive peoples make use of other means, derived from their daily business, which have nothing to do with time-reckoning; in Madagascar ‘rice-cooking’ often means half an hour, ‘the frying of a locust’ a moment[191]. The Cross River natives say:—‘The man died in less than the time in which maize is not yet completely roasted’, i. e. less than about 15 minutes; ‘the time in which one can cook a handful of vegetables’, i. e. an hour[192]. The Malays, the Javanese, and the Achenese use the following expressions for a period of time:—a blink of the eyes (literally), the time required for chewing a quid of sirih (about 5 minutes), the time required for cooking a kay of rice (about half an hour), for cooking a gantang of rice (about an hour and a half), half a day, a ‘sun-dark’, i. e. a complete day and night[193]. The natives of New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago) measure the time between sunset and the moon-rise by the smouldering of a torch or the time occupied in cooking yams, taro, or wild taro. Short divisions of time were also expressed by comparative terms, e. g. the throwing of a stick for a short distance, ‘a woman’s crossing’, or the distance a woman would paddle[194]. Very often duration of time is indicated by reference to the time needed to traverse a well-known piece of road between two places. Examples are superfluous. But all these indications of periods of time are found among more developed peoples: the primitive peoples pay little or no attention to them.

Both in the case of the day and in that of the other time-units this clinging to a natural basis long proved a hindrance to a rational system of time-reckoning, which could only be achieved by breaking away from natural phenomena. For there are no fixed natural limits of day, but if morning and evening, or still more clearly sunrise and sunset, are chosen as the limits, these must change every day and the days will vary in length. Here the midnight period proved of assistance, since it facilitated the establishing of a fixed point of divergence. This was done in Rome, and the practice had its root in daily life, where in order to indicate the time of occurrence of events which took place in the night-time the calculation was pushed forwards on both sides towards midnight, until this became the limit of divergence. It is however an artificial epoch that must be found by calculation[195].

In the second place the hour of antiquity is a twelfth part of the whole time of daylight, and this duodecimal division was also transferred to the night, which had commonly been divided into four watches according to the practice borrowed from military life. This hour therefore varied in length according to the time of the year. The inconvenience of a varying division of this nature must have made itself felt in daily life, although in the south it was not so insupportable as it must have been in the north. It rendered the construction of the clock difficult, and above all was impracticable for scientific astronomy. Hence alongside of it appeared even in antiquity the hour of constant length or the double hour, viz. a twelfth or a twenty-fourth part respectively of the complete day. The double hour, notwithstanding Bilfinger’s assertion to the contrary, arose in Babylon (kasbu), and is connected with the duodecimal division of the zodiac[196]. This hour of constant length was not generally adopted until very late: the varying hour remained almost up to the end of the Middle Ages. Our modern hour has only been in general use since about the 14th century, when it was first spread by the construction of the striking-clock[197]. Its convenience for the business of practical life and the construction of the clock together secured the victory of the hour as 1/24th of the day, originally a numerical and astronomical division. A condition for its use was the fusion of day and night into one unit, since as long as these were kept separate the constant hour could not thrive. Both the complete day and its regular divisions however only won their way after a very long time, because men were unwilling to depart from the natural basis in time-reckoning. The substitution of the artificial for the natural time-reckoning has also, as far as the day is concerned, created a rational system of reckoning which has borrowed from the natural system only one feature, viz. the average length of the complete day.