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TEMPUS FUGIT
PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HISTORIC DEVICES FOR TELLING TIME
Time flies, time fades, time is running out...
but how to define something that is not directly traceable with
common physical methodology, how to trace something that is not
easy to define and leaves no visible traces of its activity? No
other phenomenon challenged the thoughts of both the natural
scientist and the humanist like the mystery of chronometry. Is
the passage of time simply an illusion? What is the essence of
time, anyway?
The famous Early Christian philosopher and theologian Saint
Augustine of Hippo once argued that
Atmosphere clock
he knew well what time is until somebody
dared to ask him. In our modern age time seems so self-evident
to us - our daily life is defined and declined by the hands of
the clock. Hours, minutes and seconds are so exactly calculated,
that we do not have to think, but only to live according to an
electronic or mechanical device that dictates to us when to
sleep, to eat and go to work. By international consensus one
second is defined by exactly 9.192.631.770 microwave cycles of
the nucleus Caesium 133. Thanks to the atomic clock the next
generations won’t even have to care about the exactness of this
time device. For the next one million years, its deviation will
be less than one second.
But what does time mean, when there is nobody to reason it? To
understand the fact of time some sensory organ is necessary to
recognize and compute the difference between past, present and
future. And only with the ability to memorise something can you
have an idea of things that are happening “now” and “things that
already
Bone plate month calendar
happened”; it is a complex intellectual act that requires a
brain with a certain capacity. Different from other beings,
humans demonstrate their conception of time through visible
signs, or with the words of the philosopher and sociologist
Norbert Elias:
“Time is a smart human act of synthesising things; it can only
be understood considering socio-historical evolution”.
Several million years ago there might have developed something
like a conception of time through early forms of communication
between members of hominid groups, e.g. to coordinate activities
of different duration like hunting and collecting food. As a
result of a nomadic lifestyle, defined through seasonal
travelling, the basic constants of our existence – the change of
seasons, dawn and sunset, changing climate, to be at the mercy
of heavy rainfall or burning sun -- affected prehistoric man in
a much more intense way than we can imagine today. These
constants forced man to follow a certain rhythm, a rhythm that
can be structured into phases of rest and phases of activity.
Water-clock manual
But the earliest items that might show an
attempt to pinpoint the phenomenon of time date back to the Late
Palaeolithic age (40.000-35.000 BC.). A large number of well-
documented Palaeolithic graves shows that early humans cared for
the deceased, that they were able to count and, to a certain
degree, abstract the complexity of life. The phenomena that are
visible in the sky certainly awoke special interest, especially
at night. Different from the orbit of the sun or the complex
mechanism of stellar motion, the lunar cycle can be observed
much better, for the shape of the moon is changing much more
obviously during a short span of time. Amongst the huge bulk of
artefacts with more or less regular incisions only very few
could be interpreted as time-telling items. But such a
hypothesis may be justified for a marl stick attributed to a
Palaeolithic grave from Dolni Vestonice in Moravia. It has a
regular sequence of longer and shorter incisions on it that
could be correlated with the lunar cycle, which lasts
approximately 29 days. So the people of the Old Stone Age might
have understood to translate a perpetual astronomical phenomenon
into an abstract, concrete artefact and, one step further, they
might have understood to use the regularity of the changing moon
to predict its present status and the following stage, e.g. when
the sky was clouded. So maybe the moon may be the first “time
device” to be translated into abstract order.
Water-clock
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Talking about
the sun as a source for time scheduling, there is strong
evidence that some Neolithic and Metal Age monuments were
used as monumental calendars: a distinct type of Neolithic
causeway enclosure had its main axis oriented according to
the spring and autumn equinox. And the main axis of the
famous monumental Stonehenge complex, although dismantled
and rebuilt several times from the Final Neolithic to the
Middle Bronze Age (3.000 to 1.500 BC.) was always oriented
to welcome sunrise at midsummer. To draw a rough
hypothetical outline of a prehistoric conception of time, we
can argue that Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer societies
recognized sky phenomena like the lunar cycle and managed to
relate these phenomena to their own rhythm of life and the
rhythm of their environment. The lunar month with 29.53 days
can be considered as the first fixed schedule in prehistory.
Neolithic cultures, whose lifestyle was based on agriculture
and animal husbandry, made their temporal rhythm dependent
on the solar cycle and the change of the seasons. The spaces
of time for their economic activities (sowing, harvesting,
raising cattle) and religious obligations, the markers for
change and renewal were broadly set. The cyclic appearance
of nature, the realisation and use of its biological
mechanism saved the existence of Neolithic settlement
groups. This mechanism was the very basic temporal measure.
A monumental installation like Stonehenge maybe reflects the
desire for permanence or a deeply rooted fear that this
cyclic structure could lose balance and fall apart. An
additional division of time, apart from year, season, month
or day should be excluded.
But what
caused this additional division, the breaking up of time
into weeks, hours and minutes, for e.g. a week is an
absolutely artificial construct that is not defined through
any kind of celestial phenomena? In this case a closer look
at ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia is necessary. Totally
different from prehistoric Europe, thanks to written
sources, we are able to draw a much more precise picture of
the realm of ideas and intellectual history of ancient
Mesopotamia. For this reason we can divide the conception
and calculation of time in this region into three different
socio-cultural segments.
The conception
of time for the people in Mesopotamia or Egypt whose life
was based on animal husbandry and agriculture most probably
differed not very much from the conception that people had
in prehistoric Europe. The life rhythm of rural folk was
always based on natural constants, the change of seasons,
midsummer and midwinter. In sharp contrast we have also a
highly developed scientific astronomical tradition in
Mesopotamia that we can trace back to the 3rd mill. BC. The
exact calculation of stellar constellations is one of the
most admirable aspects in the history of ancient
Mesopotamia. The fate of its local kings was closely linked
to celestial phenomena, often in a way that appears more
than pedantic to us nowadays. An exact measure of time was
essential for this task.
As a result an abstract time frame was
established that was not linked to the natural time cycle of
daily life. The third, and essential, subsystem for the
declination of time in ancient Mesopotamia was based on
rational economy. To coordinate and control the temple
economies between the different city-states, that means the
influx of raw materials and finished goods, a harmonically
but artificial schedule for the economic year was calculated.
Conventional sundials, the main device for telling time in
both Egypt and Mesopotamia, have the bad side-effect that
they are useless after sunset. For this reason the
introduction of the water clock has to be considered one of
the most admirable inventions to challenge this difficulty.
In early Mesopotamia this kind of clock existed, and
Babylonian scientists were aware of the manifold physical
problems that go along with the construction of such an
instrument: the loss of pressure when the water level lowers,
and the different physical rules when water is exposed to
changing room temperatures. A completely preserved Egyptian
example in the shape of a wide-mouthed bowl, dated to the
reign of Amenhotep III (1415-1380 BC.) comes from the Amon
temple in Luxor. The device was filled with water that
dripped out through a very small hole pierced through the
Kreisgrabenanlage
bottom. Markings on the inside told the time that had
already passed. The outflow of water measured approximately
10 drops per second.
Although huge mechanical tower clocks were installed in
monasteries from AD 1400, water clocks remained the most
exact devices for measuring time until the introduction of
the pendulum clock in AD 1700.
In sum, one can argue that the additional mathematical
structuring of time for economic, political, military or
religious reasons could only be the effort of an elite, that
means priests, writers, in short people who had access to,
and knowledge of the complicated calculations necessary to
establish an artificial time frame. Nowadays, the
declination and rearrangement of an artificial time frame
can have a political dimension.
Thomas Zimmermann M.A.
Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum
Research Institute for Prehistory
Ernst-Ludwig-Platz 2
55116 Mainz – GERMANY
zimmermann2001@web.de
Newsletter
No. 2
- 2003, Pg. 16
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