Re: measuring time

Max #1 wrote:
> 2 questions come to my mind now with that discution:
>
> Did all the cultures of the world noticed that the duration of the day
> varies among the year and is not constant?
Certainly in temperate/northern areas it would have been apparent.
>
> Did all the cultures noticed that there is a year? There are probably
> places
> where there is no visible variation of seasons
Herder/nomads would need to know; agriculturalists would certainly need to
know. (Consider the various ancient structures like Stonehenge and the rock
structure in the US Southwest, that apparently are oriented to detect the
Solstices or Equinoxes.

In the tropics (at least SE Asia and Central America; I don't know about
Africa) there are definite wet/cooler and dry/hotter seasons; if the
soltices/equinoxes aren't very obvious along the Equator (I don't know about
that, however)-- then you can look for the appearance of certain
constellations.  The Pleiades seem to have been important in ancient
Indonesia (and still were in some 18-19th C. pre-Contact "primitive" areas.

Everywhere, I'd think, it's evident when the sun is directly overhead, and
so time to knock off for lunch....

Indonesian has some interesting non-clock ways of discussing periods of the
day--pagi 'morning' sunrise to about noon; siang 'bright' noon to about 4,
the hottest time of day-- lunch followed by siesta till around 2:30,
everything shuts down; soré 4-ish to sunset, when the heat abates and
everything comes back to life...

Then there are two words to denote "earlier/later in the same day" -- tadi
and nanti (also means 'wait, expect').
tadi pagi 'earlier this morning'
nanti pagi 'later on this morning'
nanti siang 'later on this afternoon (noon-4-ish)'
nanti soré 'later on after 4-ish' etc. etc.

tadi malam 'last night', nanti malam 'later tonight'

Something like that might suffice in an agricultural/pre-tech society...

Reply