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

In the Nicobars notched sticks in the form of a scimitar-blade are in use. They have notches on the edge and on the flat, the former denote months, the latter the days of the waning and waxing moon. They are used e. g. in finding out when a child of the owner learned to walk. The Shompen take a piece of bamboo and make as many bends in it as they mean to reckon days[1079]. The Negritos of Zambales in order to count the days make knots in a cord of bejuco and cut off one of these knots every day[1080]. On the Solomon Islands also knotted cords are used for the same purpose[1081]. The counting is particularly necessary for the celebrating of the great feast of the dead at the proper time. The eating the death, gana matea, begins with the burial; they eat first, as they say, ‘his graves’, after that they eat ‘his days’—the 5th, 10th, and after that every ten up to the hundredth, and it may be, in the case of a father, wife, or mother, even so far as the thousandth. For counting the days, so that the guests from distant villages may arrive on the proper days, they use cycas fronds, one in the hands of each party, on which the appointed days are marked by the pinching off or turning down of a leaflet as each day passes[1082]. According to another authority the moons are counted. At the coming of the young moon after the death of a man either a knot is made in a thread or a notch is cut in a piece of wood. Up to thirty moons are then counted. The object is to calculate the time up to the great funeral wake of dead chiefs. For young people it takes place from 20 to 30 months afterwards, for old people after 10 months, for an unimportant person as soon as 3 or 4 months afterwards[1083]. In Nauru, west of the Gilbert Islands, knots were tied in a string when days were to be counted, e. g. the 15 days of the confinement of a woman[1084].

Only seldom is it mentioned that the months are counted on the fingers, although obviously this must often happen; the Klamath and the Modok used to do so formerly[1085]. Certain very primitive peoples use not only fingers and toes but also other parts of the body in counting. The day of an assembly is determined in this fashion by an Australian tribe which in words can seldom count more than four. The people touch various parts of each other’s bodies—the wrist, the arm, the head—each of which stands for a special day, until the intended day is reached. Thus two or more groups can accurately determine the lapse of time and can meet on the day agreed upon[1086]. The curious names of months of the Tunguses of the Sea of Okhotsk[1087] are similarly to be explained, as is shewn by the method of counting the year used by the Yukaghir. They call the year n-e’ -malgil, which means ‘all the joints’. The reckoning of the months by the joints is done in the following manner. They bend the third row of phalanges of the fingers on both hands, and put them together. The line of the joining they call July. Then the knuckles of the second row of phalanges on the right hand will be August. The joints between the phalanges and metacarpals represent September; the wrist-joint is October; the elbow-joint is November; the shoulder-joint, December; between the head and the backbone will be January; the shoulder-joint on the left arm will be February; the elbow-joint, March; the wrist-joint, April; the joint between the fingers and the palm, May; and the knuckles of the second row of phalanges on the left hand, June[1088].

These examples may suffice. The subject is monotonous and is of little importance for the calendar, since the days are counted independently of the latter, beginning at an arbitrary starting-point. The counting that is important for the calendar is that according to the days of the lunar month, but in this the primitive peoples hold to the concrete phenomenon of the moon. The habit of reckoning in this fashion may however be partly responsible for the fact that among certain peoples every day of the month has not been given a name, but the days are counted from certain points of departure, such as new moon, full moon, etc. Very rarely do we meet with a genuinely calendrical use of the tally. The Wa-Sania of East Africa, who as subjects of the Galla and later since the invasion of the Somali have been exposed to all kinds of civilising influences, make a notch for each day, and at the end of the month the stick is laid aside and a new one comes into use[1089]. Similarly at the southern end of Lake Nyassa pieces of wood strung on a cord are used in counting the days of the month that have passed[1090].

The Kiwai Papuans count the months by means of little sticks, which are tied into two bundles corresponding to the two seasons of the year. One end is pointed, the other oblique, and when a month has passed, the stick corresponding to it is turned round. The stick belonging to the month keke is provided with a top-knot and feather, that of karongo has a mark cut in it and a top-knot like that of keke, but no feather[1091].

CHAPTER XIII.
ARTIFICIAL PERIODS OF TIME. FEASTS.

In the more fully developed calendar there are not seldom found periods of time which are reckoned without reference to any of the factors given by Nature. Such are, for example, our months, which, though historically arising from the lunar month, are now only periods of time with a definite number of days, independent of the moon. Such also is our shifting seven-day week, which, chiefly through the agency of Mohammedanism, has also been widely extended among peoples of a lower stage of development. These artificial periods, arising often from a natural period which for purposes of the calendar has been detached from its natural basis, belong to a highly developed stage of time-reckoning. Only among certain comparatively far-advanced, semi-primitive peoples does an artificial period of the simplest kind first appear, and then only one, the market-week, the origin of which it is very easy to understand.

The market-week appears in two widely separated districts—in West Central Africa, and in certain of the East Indian islands. Among the Bakongo the markets are four, viz. konzo, nkenge, nsona, and nkandu. These have given their names to the four days that comprise the Congo week. All the markets held on a certain day all over the Lower Congo are called konzo, all on the next day nkenge, etc. These markets are held at different places, e. g. all the konzo markets are held on different sites from all the markets held on the three successive days, and are so arranged that one in four will be within two or three miles of a town, the next day’s market may be ten miles away from the first town, but near some other town or towns, the next from 15 to 20 miles, the next perhaps 25 miles away from the first town. Thus every village has at least one market during the week within a reasonable distance of its doors. In order to describe the markets the place-names are sometimes added, e. g. nsona Ngungu. Each market has its special wares[1092]. The Babwende have the same names[1093]. Three Bantu tribes of the Congo State have the four-day week, but in certain cases with different names; one of the days is market-day[1094]. This is a very practical arrangement, which must gradually have regulated itself. There are also greater markets which are held every eight days[1095]—a doubling of the period, therefore. The same is the case among the Edo-speaking peoples, among whom the week is everywhere a recognised period of time, and is, properly speaking, 4 days long, this being the interval between the two markets at any given spot. Occasionally, as in the Ida district, eight-day markets are found, but the names applied to the intervening days clearly shew that a four-day week was the primary one. One of the four days is commonly known as the rest-day, and on this day men frequently stop at home, though farm-work is not absolutely forbidden. Women, on the other hand, go to market as usual[1096]. Among the Ibo-speaking peoples the names of the four days are eke, oye, afo, and nkwo. These are the same names as those of the Bini, but afo and oye are in the inverted order; it is idle to speculate on the origin of the names[1097]. In Loango the four days are variously named, but principally they are called nssona, nduka, ntono, nsilu, which names are also often applied to the open spaces where markets are held on the days in question; nssona corresponds to our Sunday[1098], i. e. it is a day of rest.

The Yoruba have, besides the market-week, a longer one of 16 (or 17) days. Of these two periods Ellis says:—The Yoruba week consists of five days, and six of them are supposed to make a lunar month, which however always begins with the new moon. (This is therefore the familiar round number.) The days are:—1, ako-ojo, the first day, day of general rest, considered unlucky; the temples are swept and water is brought in procession for the use of the gods. No business of importance is ever undertaken on this day. 2, ojo-awo, ‘day of the secret’, sacred to Ifa. 3, ojo-Ogun, 4, ojo-Shango, 5, ojo-Obatula, i. e. the name of a god, added to the word ‘day’. Each of these four days is a day of rest for the followers of the god to which it is dedicated, and for them only, but ako-ojo is a day of rest for all. Markets are held every fifth day in different townships, but never on the ako-ojo. From this custom has arisen another mode of computing time, namely by periods of 17 days, called eta-di-ogun (‘three less than twenty’). This is the outcome of the Esu societies, the members of which meet every fifth market-day. The first and fifth market-days are counted in, and thus the number 17 is obtained. For instance, supposing the second day of a month to be a market-day, the second market would fall on the 6th, the third on the 10th, the fourth on the 14th, and the fifth on the 18th. The fifth market-day, on which the members meet, is counted again as the first of the next series. These clubs are so common that the 17-day period has become a kind of auxiliary measure of time[1099]. The account contains an inward contradiction. Ellis enumerates five days and says that the market is held every fifth day, but when he reckons the days again below, the periods are four-day periods. We must probably assume that the word ako-ojo is applied to one of the four days, denoting it to be a day of rest, and that Ellis, when he says that the market is held every fifth day, is counting inclusively according to the linguistic usage of the natives, as the Greeks also did. This is the opinion of another authority, who writes as follows:—Some say the Yoruba week is composed of four days, and some of five. This same mystification recurs in the number of days said to complete one of their months. Some say there are sixteen and others seventeen days in a month. The natives rest on the fifth day, that is to say, having counted four days, they really rest on the first day of the next week, counting that day as one. So in their next great division of time they say that they rest on the seventeenth day, which is a great market-day, and this is, of course, the first day of what is their second so-called month. Fourteen of these months complete the ancient Yoruba so-called year of 224 days[1100].