Primitive Time-reckoning / A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples

by Martin P. Nilsson

Few travellers and scholars have been so unfettered and unprejudiced by our inherited ideas of the calendar as Codrington; accordingly they have usually striven to establish a proper series of months, or at least normal series. How much is lost to view owing to this tendency can hardly be imagined, but there are sufficient indications in the reports to point to the fluctuating, manifold, and unstable nature of the primitive naming of the months.

One of these indications is the great variability of the names. Many peoples have remained at the stage at which a fixed connexion between month and season does not exist: every season—taking the word in its broadest sense—, every natural event and occupation may be associated with a month. If these relationships are treated as names of months, there will arise a great number of names of months, which will vary according to circumstances and to the whim of the speaker. Thus it is said[812] of the Eskimos of the Behring Straits that very often different names are used to describe the same month, when this month occurs at a time at which different occupations or natural phenomena are in progress. That the situation is, or at least was, the same among most peoples is shewn by the numerous variants which are to be found even in the preceding lists, and would certainly be much more numerous if the authorities, in their efforts to establish a normal series, had not passed them over. In the same fashion is to be explained the next surprising phenomenon, viz. that certain peoples, in the matter of the number of months in the year, give a far greater number than twelve or thirteen. This is not always to be set down to the inability to count. That explanation serves when prominent Igorot declare that the year has a hundred months[813], but not when the Kiowa number 14 or 15[814]. The Hopi year too may have 14 months, since the second part of October receives a special name[815]. Perhaps the month is halved, just as when among the Central Eskimos the days of a certain month, which has only twilight and no sun, receive one name, and the rest of the month another[816]. A traveller of the 18th century states that the Tahitians reckon 14 months, and adds that it is a mystery how they count them[817]. But these traces are here seen to be relics of an earlier state of affairs such as Codrington has clearly described:—“Months have their names from what is done and what happens when the moon appears and while it lasts; the same moon has different names. If all the names of moons in use in one language were set in order, the periods of time would overlap, and the native year would be artificially made up of 20 or 30 months”.

This fluctuating character of the nomenclature explains the instability of the names of the months; when anything new happens which is of importance for the life of the people, it serves to describe a month. Thus the Lenope, after they migrated inland, where no shads were found, renamed the shad-month the sugar-refining month[818]; and the Pima, after they had learnt to cultivate wheat, named a month from the wheat harvest[819]. The best evidence is the multiplicity and diversity of the names of months, which is found everywhere, even among the most closely related peoples and tribes, or different groups of the same tribe, as is shewn by the above series of months from beginning to end. Most significant and by no means isolated is the case of the Cheyenne, different groups of whom have separate names for the months. Since they are well acquainted with the customs of the animals and roam over wide areas, they easily recognise any name for a month, even if they themselves do not use it. The reason for this is also that the seasons, which serve as descriptions of the months, are common to all and at once become intelligible[820]. They have not been fixed in a conventional series, as is the case with the months as we conceive them; ours is the final point of the development, which begins with a chaotic mass of names of months.

We see that at this stage the number of months is indifferent: the question how many months the year has simply does not exist, and consequently there is no need to make the series of moon-months fit into the solar year. There are peoples who do not even extend the reckoning by moons to the whole year. There is a time ‘in which nothing happens’, which is quite without interest and in which no one takes the trouble to observe or name the moons. Such a period is e. g. the depth of winter in the far north, when people only vegetate, as well as they can. Among the tribes of the Kamchatka river the tenth and last month is said to be as long as three others[821]. The Amansi, one of the Ibo-speaking tribes, reckon ten months and an evulevu (idiot, nothing, empty month)[822]. More often we find series of months with less than twelve names. The inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands had a ten-month year, although as well as this they knew the complete year, which was reckoned and named according to the Pleiades[823]. Even the Maoris are said to have counted no more months after the tenth[824]. The Yurak Samoyedes and the Tunguses of the Amur count only eleven months, the northern Kamchadales ten[825]. The Yeneseisk Ostiaks name only the months of one half of the year, the seven winter months[826], and so do many Indian tribes. The Bannock have no names for the months of the warm season of the year[827]. Many Cheyenne tribes have only six months with names[828]; the present condition of the calendar of the Hopi and Zuñi points to the fact that this was really the case with these tribes also[829]. The Diegueño of S. California have only six months[830]. Even where a full series of months has arisen, there are traces of this earlier state of affairs. Thus the Omaha have one month ‘in which nothing happens’[831]. Of the 13 months of the Upper Wellé those occupying the 7th and 13th positions have no names[832]. Among the Voguls of the Tawda three months seem to be unnamed[833].

A further very wide-spread phenomenon of the nomenclature of the months—the pairs of months, in which two months of the same name are distinguished as the big and the little, the former and the latter, etc.—is due to the connecting of the month with somewhat larger divisions of the natural year, covering a period of about two months. Thus the Tchuvashes have a very steep month and a month of little steepness, the Ugric Ostiaks a big and a little winter-ridge month, the Minusinsk Tatars a little and a big cold, the Karagasses a frost month and a big frost month, the Samoyedes a first and a big dark month, the Voguls a little and a big autumn-hunting month, perhaps also a little and a big mid-summer month, the Thlinkits a month before, and a month when, everything hatches, the Indians in De la Potherie a first and a second moon in which the bear brings forth her young, the Kiowa a little bud-moon and a bud-moon, the latter sometimes with ‘big’ added, the Creek Indians a little and a big ripening moon, a little and a big chestnut moon, a big and a little winter, the latter also called ‘little brother of big winter’ (note the inverted order in this case), a little and a big spring. The Seminole have four pairs of months, in three the first is distinguished as the little, e. g. little and big mulberry moon, but on the other hand the big winter precedes the little; the Zuñi have a little and a big wind-month. Somewhat similar are the pairs of months of the Pima, ‘leaves’ and ‘flowers’ of the cottonwood and mesquite respectively. The Nandi of British East Africa have two pairs, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘second sacrifice’, ‘strong wind’ and ‘second strong wind’. Compare also the two Basuto months phupjoane, ‘to begin to swell’, from phuphu, and phuphu, ‘to swell’. The two series of months from Timor shew more pairs. In the Polynesian series pairs of months are equally frequent. In Tonga there are two pairs, including a first and a second rainy month, on the Society Islands there is a first and a second palolo month, and so also in Samoa, in Tahiti a first and a last hunger. How the pair so frequently occurring among the Siberian peoples, little and big month, is to be explained is uncertain (cp. among the Thlinkits ‘moon-child’ or young month, and big month). It may be that something is to be understood, or perhaps they are simply two months without names, which are distinguished by the aid of the common epithets.

Such pairs of months exist where greater seasons are involved in the determining of the moons, and they are in fact convenient, since their use obviates the unfortunate circumstance which has been a source of great confusion to primitive peoples, viz. that a natural phase from which it is the custom to name a month may fall on the border-line between two moons. So long as the description of the months remains quite fluctuating and occasional, this and similar inconveniences do not make themselves felt, but a very natural development leads to a conventionalising of the series of months. In common speech a selection among the various names of months unconsciously takes place, so that those prevail which relate to more important occupations and natural phases. Thus arises a fixed, or tolerably well fixed, series of months, such as appears in most of the reports handed down to us.

CHAPTER VIII.
OLD SEMITIC MONTHS.

1. BABYLONIA.

In the much disputed questions of the ancient Babylonian astronomy and calendar the non-expert is in a situation of despair: for whoever cannot himself make use of the sources is referred to the often directly contradictory statements of the experts. I cannot however shirk the task of investigating whether in Babylonian calendric systems traces of the primitive time-reckoning are not also to be found. Unfortunately I cannot limit myself to matters upon which a certain unity of opinion prevails, but must also touch upon burning questions, such as the intercalation. What is here offered is in the nature of things only an attempt: but I may perhaps be allowed to express the hope that competent specialists, not led astray by chronological hypotheses, may afterwards observe how far the few but obvious characteristics of the primitive time-reckoning recur also in the Babylonian system.