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

The circumstance that the lunar months are among almost all peoples named from the phases of Nature involves the necessity of an agreement between the two really incommensurable periods given by the sun and the moon. This problem is the central point of the older scientific chronology. We shall now investigate more closely how the problem has arisen, and what has been its development among the primitive peoples.

Where there is only a series of less than twelve months, the problem of calendar regulation does not exist. The series is begun on the appearance of the signs from which the first month is named, and is continued from that point until the end. The vacant period serves, unconsciously of course, to bring lunar reckoning and solar year into agreement. Nevertheless the months can be fixed in a more accurate fashion. The Eskimos of Greenland, for instance, mark the winter solstice by the position of the sun, and then begin to count the moons, and continue doing so until the moon can no longer be observed in the bright summer nights[862]. The Lower Thompson Indians in British Columbia counted up to ten or sometimes eleven months, the remainder of the year being called the autumn or late fall. This indefinite period of unnamed months enabled them to bring the lunar and solar year into harmony. Also the Shuswap and the Lillooet in the same country counted eleven months and then the ‘fall-time’, which was the balance of the year[863].

Among most peoples, however, a series of months covering the whole year has arisen, and this series has more often 13 than 12 months. Here the difficulties first begin. If a new moon falls on a certain day of the solar year, in the following year a new moon will occur about 11 days before or 19 days after this day, and in the year after that about 21 days before or 9 days after it. Since the natural phases are bound up with the solar year, they get out of place in relation to the moon. The situation is still further complicated by the fact that the phases of Nature, and with them the occupations, vary somewhat according to the peculiarities of the climate in different years. Hence doubt arises, and the accustomed order of succession of the months is broken. And this is not a mere theoretical piece of reasoning: primitive peoples are not seldom in perplexity as to which month they are to count. Of the Dakota it is said that they often have heated debates as to which moon it is. The raccoons do not come out of their winter holes at the same time every winter, the conditions which cause inflammation of the eyes do not appear at the same time every spring, the geese lay their eggs at a slightly different period according to the character of the year. Twelve moons do not bring them back to the same point in the season as that from which their reckoning began; and therefore towards the end of the winter there is dispute among the Dakota as to the correct current date[864]. If the people has a thirteenth month, the matter is no better. Of the Pawnee, who had an intercalary month, it is stated that they sometimes became inextricably involved in reckoning, and were obliged to have recourse to objects about them to rectify their computations. Councils have been known to be disturbed, or even broken up, in consequence of irreconcilable differences of opinion as to the correctness of their calculation[865]. The same is reported of the Caffres. Their months are named e. g. from the first cry of the cuckoo, the flowering of the erythusia, the dust in the dry season, midwinter, and since all these phenomena may appear at somewhat different dates, even the Caffre astrologers do not know what moon they are really in. The first appearance of the Pleiades just before sunrise always rectifies the confusion[866]. Even peoples who have a developed, astronomically regulated, lunisolar calendar sometimes have recourse to the natural phases in order to rectify it. In Bali not only were the stars observed but also the flowering of certain plants, or even the date when the white ants got their wings, in order to rectify the lunar calendar[867]. The months of the Bataks of Sumatra are regulated by the constellation Scorpio[868]: the magicians, who control the calendar, are not certain as to the position of the months, but look for general points of reference in the phenomena of Nature. Thus, for instance, the dates of certain migratory birds are known: they come in the fourth and go in the first month. In the third month a black flying-ant is accustomed to appear in great numbers. The presence of the bird of prey lali piuan makes known the sixth and seventh months. The bird sosoit sings in the eleventh month, and the turtle-dove is silent in the eighth. The west monsoon proclaims the third, storms are very frequent in the eleventh and twelfth[869].

Many peoples slip over the difficulties, they do not properly know of how many moons the year consists: such peoples are the Dyaks[870], the Warumbi of Central Africa[871], the Ibo-speaking peoples[872], the Algonquin[873]. But if a definite series of months is established, without a vacant interval such as occurs in the case of some peoples, the number of months naturally becomes 12 or 13. Even in this case the people sometimes let matters go as they will, as is reported of the Yukaghir. The people having been christianised, says our authority, it is now difficult to say whether the ancient Yukaghir made some adjustment by adding a month to accommodate their lunar year to the solar one. It seems to me, from the answers which I received from the Yukaghir to my inquiries, that this point did not interest them. Generally a month is the time from one new moon to another, but it did not matter to them whether twelve such months made up a full cycle of the year or not. When it was necessary they simply ignored some of the names of months, being far ahead[874]. The Koryak have twelve lunar months, and the first one begins at the time of the winter solstice and corresponds to our December. Yet they are very little troubled by the fact that in the interval between two winter solstices an extra new moon may occur[875]. The very perplexity described above implies a great advance, viz. the recognition of the difficulties, which is the first stage towards mastering them.

Therefore every now and again some month must be left out or a month added. This necessity, at first not recognised, or not clearly so, is the chief cause of the above-mentioned disagreement in the reckoning of the months[876]. For when the counting is performed in accordance with the series only, it soon happens (apart from the climatic variations of the years already mentioned) that the months deviate from the natural phases from which they are named. The arguments in the dispute as to which month it really is are based on the condition of the phases of nature: the result is a correction of the counting, i. e. the months are pushed forwards or backwards according to circumstances, i. e. the month which should have followed is left out, or a month is added to the series. Thus an intercalation comes about without it being suspected what is really done. In general the whole process is not even so conscious as the desire for theoretical exactness has led me to represent in using the example of the Dakota. The series and the number of months were from the beginning unstable, and the natural conditions have brought it about that this characteristic has been preserved in at least one particular, viz. that in certain cases a month could be passed over. Let us, for the sake of clearness, take a fictitious example from Swedish conditions. As a rule the rye-harvest falls at the beginning of August, the oat-harvest at the end of August and beginning of September, the potato-harvest at the end of September. These occupations might very well be distributed among three months named after them. But a year would sometimes come in which the oat-harvest took place about at the interval between two moons, the rye-harvest at the beginning of the first moon, and the potato-harvest at the end of the second moon. There would therefore be no place for a month of the oat-harvest, it must simply be omitted. That this is the case among the primitive peoples is proved by the fact that many, in fact most, of them have a series of thirteen months of which one must according to circumstances be passed over in certain years.

Experience teaches the peoples who have only a twelve-month series that this is not sufficient: so we are told of the Mandan and Minnetaree that they have generally recognised that the year has more than twelve months[877]. When the intercalary month, as among certain Indians, is named ‘the lost month’[878], this points to the fact that it is an addition to a twelve-month series, just as in Babylonia, where the same method of expression recurs[879]. The Masai have twelve months[880]. The great rains cease with loo-’n-gokwa, which is named from the evening setting of the Pleiades. Should the rains still continue at the beginning of the following month, the Masai say:—“We have forgotten, this is loo-’n-gokwa.” Should the hot season not be over at the beginning of the month following ol-oiborare, they say:—“We have forgotten, this is ol-oiborare”[881]. It is clear that if through the dead reckoning the months are advanced in relation to the seasons, one month will be repeated, i. e. intercalated. The preceding month is forgotten.

Thus the necessity for modifying the series of months is felt, and in response to this an empirical intercalation arises. When this intercalation is left to itself, conflicting opinions, as we have already seen, arise as to it. An end is made to these disputes and order is established when the decision is placed in the hands of definite persons. This was done among the Jews, the regulation of whose calendar affords a particularly plain example of this empirical intercalation, which, out of religious conservatism, they kept until well into the post-Christian period, in fact until the necessities of the Dispersion compelled, from the second century, a mitigation of the original rules, and finally at an uncertain period, perhaps not until medieval times, led to a calculated regulation. According to the Talmud the appearance of the crescent of the new moon was determined by deposition before a court of justice of three members. After that the beginning of the month was signalised in the country in earlier times by fires, later by couriers. A suitable intercalation was absolutely necessary for the celebration of the feasts, since at the Feast of the Passover on the 14th of Nisan the first-fruits of the corn were offered, and the two other great feasts were also of an agrarian character. For this purpose the court of justice visited the fields. If they saw that the crops were not yet ripe at the Passover time, and that the fruits also were not so far advanced as they were accustomed to be at this time of the year, they intercalated a month in accordance with these two signs: if only one of these signs was to be observed the decision was made to depend on other minor circumstances[882]. By way of example I give an official document of Rabbi Gamaliel II, issued to the inhabitants of Judaea, Galilaea, and the Dispersion at the date 90–110 A. D.[883]. “We make known to you that the lambs are small and the young of the birds are tender and the time of the corn-harvest has not yet come, so that it seems right to me and my brothers to add to this year thirty days.” The intercalary month was the last month of the year, Adar. On rare occasions Nisan, when it had begun, was altered into Adar II. Here the intercalation took place in the interests of the religious cult, but the cult on its side was dependent on the natural phenomena. The intercalation is of the same empirical order as that which we have met among the primitive peoples. It is only that the development of the ecclesiastical laws has led to a judicial procedure, and the task of determining the intercalation has been handed over to a committee of the Sanhedrin.

There exists a possibility of a somewhat different development among peoples who originally had less than twelve months and also counted a vacant interval: it is conceivable that the unnamed months may be named, until at last twelve months have names and the vacant interval remains only as an intercalary month. This seems to be the case among the Central Eskimos; they have a ‘sunless’ month, which covers the time when the sun does not appear and when there is also hardly any twilight: it is said to be of indeterminate length. After an interval of a few years this month is left out, if new moon and winter solstice coincide[884]. When the intercalary month has thus arisen, its position in the year is fixed. One other example of this method may exist. The author who gives the list of the months of the Kwakiutl of the Island of Vancouver, beginning with March, inserts between the tenth and eleventh months the winter solstice, and says that the solstice moons are called by a name which probably means ‘split both ways’, and adds that the readjustment is made in midwinter[885]. Unfortunately the author does not tell us how the readjustment is made, whether the winter solstice moon or some other moon is the intercalary month. If the former be the case, the explanation is given by the above.

There is rarely any rule for the position of the intercalary month. Where the sources simply enumerate a thirteen-month series, it is to be presumed that no fixed position for the intercalary month exists. But such a month can be found, since naturally a month named from a natural phase of less importance will be omitted, or an additional month inserted, at a time when there is little work going on, and when consequently little attention is paid to the time-reckoning. So it is said of the Pawnee that the intercalary month was usually put in after the summer months[886]. On the Society Islands the month corresponding to our March or our July was commonly omitted[887].

The first regulation of the calendar is therefore roughly empirical, and in fact is nothing but an occasional and arbitrary deviation, necessitated by the natural phases, from the existing series of months. The natural phases, however, as we saw in chapter IV, are determined in more accurate fashion by the stars, and particularly by their risings and settings. Consequently the months also can be named from stars, and a considerable number of such names of months was found in the lists of chapter VII. This phenomenon has hitherto been only briefly touched upon; for the regulation of the calendar it is of supreme importance, since the risings and settings of the stars accurately determine the date, so that the fluctuation of the natural phases is excluded. Where only one month is named after a star and determined by it, the series of months is immovably fixed.