SCOTLAND'S prehistoric huntergatherer tribes, widely seen as
civilisation's late starters, may have been among the first humans to
form a concept of time - including creating an annual calendar.
14-07-13. Archeologists have found evidence that they built a giant "year
clock" capable of tracking the passing of lunar months and linking these
to the changing of the seasons, so enabling them to prepare for changes
in food supply.
The structure, in a field near Banchory in
Aberdeenshire, dates back 10,000 years, meaning it predates the calendar
systems created by the ancient Mesopotamians 5000 years ago, which had
been thought the world's oldest.
"The capacity to
conceptualise and measure time is among the most important achievements
of human societies, and the issue of when time was 'created' by
humankind is critical in understanding how society developed," said
Vincent Gaffney, professor of landscape archeology at Birmingham
University.
His team analysed a site at Warren Field that previous excavations
showed had once been home to Mesolithic (middle Stone Age)
hunter-gatherers. Those excavations had revealed a set of pits, perhaps
used to hold large posts or stones, but whose real purpose remained
mysterious.
Gaffney and his colleagues studied the orientation of
the pits, finding they were aligned with key astronomical events such
as the phases of the moon and the midwinter sunrise.
They will
issue a full report on their findings tomorrow but an abstract released
on Birmingham University's website summarises the findings.
It said: "A pit structure, discovered in Aberdeenshire and dated to
the 8th millennium BC, has been re-analysed and appears to demonstrate a
basic calendrical function.
"The site may provide the earliest
evidence currently available for 'time reckoning' as the pit group
appears to mimic the phases of the moon and is structured to track lunar
months. It also aligns on the midwinter sunrise framed within a
prominent point on the horizon."
The ability to track the
midwinter sun hints at a level of sophistication unsuspected in
prehistoric Scots. Most early calendars were designed to track lunar
months, but could not tell their users when a year had passed. This is
because lunar months are not in step with the year, which is measured by
the time taken for the Earth to orbit the sun.
Primitive
societies often failed to recognise this, so their calendars suffered
"drift", with lunar months increasingly out of step with the time of
year as shown by the sun.
Aberdeenshire's Stone Age inhabitants
appear to have noticed this problem, however, and used the alignment of
the sun with particular posts within their calendar structure to work
out when the midwinter solstice had arrived, so marking the end of a
year. Then they used this information to "reset" the lunar clock system
with which they marked the passing of the months within the next year.
"The
monument anticipates problems associated with simple lunar calendars by
providing an annual astronomic correction in order to maintain the link
between the passage of time, indicated by the moon, and the
asynchronous solar year and associated seasons," said Gaffney.
Why,
though, was it so important for Stone Age Scots to keep track of time?
Such calendar monuments are associated with societies that had exchanged
nomadic hunter-gathering for more settled existences. It had been
thought Scotland was then thinly populated by hunter-gatherers who had
little need to track time, and whose lifestyles ruled out semi-permanent
structures.
Now, however, a new view is emerging that in areas
where food was plentiful, Stone Age people would have built small
settlements with dwellings, food stores and other structures. Warren
Field is just such a place because it was sited close to the River Dee,
which was full of fish, and in the middle of forests full of game.
It
means that what Gaffney and his colleagues have found could be the seat
of a Scottish civilisation dating to a time well before the Middle
Eastern ones that have always been seen as the cradle of humanity.
Gaffney
said: "This suggests that early hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland
had both the need and ability to track time across the years - and
perhaps within the month - and that this occurred 5000 years before the
first formal calendars were created in Mesopotamia."
The Sunday Times / theaustralian.com.au
Actualización 15-07-13.
'World's oldest calendar' discovered in Scottish field
|
An illustration of how the pits would have worked |
Actualización 15-07-13.
Descubren en Escocia el calendario más antiguo del mundo
Data del año 8.000 a.C., se encuentra en un monumento mesolítico y mide el tiempo según las fases del Sol y la Luna
La capacidad de medir el tiempo es uno de los logros
humanos más importantes y es fundamental para entender cómo se han
desarrollado las sociedades. Arqueólogos británicos han descubierto en
un monumento mesolítico de Aberdeenshire, Escocia, el que consideran el calendario más antiguo del mundo,
que data de alrededor del año 8.000 aC. Este «anuario» unisolar mide el
tiempo a partir de las fases del Sol y de la Luna. Si los científicos
están en lo cierto, precede en 5.000 años al más primitivo sistema de
medir el tiempo que se conozca haya sido creado por el hombre.
Hasta ahora, se creía que los primeros calendarios habían sido creados en Mesopotamia, hace 5.000 años.
Sin embargo, investigadores de la Universidad de Birmingham
descubrieron que un monumento (excavado originalmente en 2004) creado
por cazadores-recolectores en Aberdeenshire hace cerca de 10.000 años
parece imitar las fases de la Luna con el fin de realizar un seguimiento de los meses lunares en el transcurso de un año.
El sitio, en Warren Field, Crathes, también se alinea en la salida del Sol del solsticio de invierno,
proporcionando una corrección astronómica anual con el fin de mantener
el vínculo entre el paso del tiempo, indicado por la Luna, el año solar y
las estaciones asociadas.
«Las evidencias sugieren que las sociedades de cazadores
recolectores en Escocia tenían tanto la necesidad como la sofisticación
que hacen falta para medir el tiempo a través de los años», dice el
arqueólogo Vince Gaffney, responsable de la investigación, que se
publica en la revista online
Internet Archaeology.
«Al hacerlo, esto ilustra un paso importante hacia la construcción
formal del tiempo y, por lo tanto, de la propia historia». Según Richard
Bates, de la Universidad de St Andrews, «este es el primer ejemplo de
una estructura de este tipo y no hay ningún sitio comparable conocido en
Gran Bretaña y Europa».
Temporada de caza
«Hemos estado tomando fotografías del paisaje escocés
durante casi 40 años, registrando miles de sitios arqueológicos que no
han sido detectados desde el suelo. Warren Field destaca como algo
especial. Es notable pensar que nuestro reconocimiento aéreo puede haber
ayudado a encontrar el lugar en el que el tiempo mismo se inventó», dice David Cowley, otro de los investigadores.
Pero, ¿para qué necesitaban medir el tiempo estos
primitivos antepasados de los británicos? Christopher Gaffney, de la
Universidad de Bradford, explica que para las comunidades de
cazadores-recolectores prehistóricas, conocer qué fuentes de recursos
alimenticios estaban disponibles en diferentes épocas del año era
crucial para su supervivencia. Estas comunidades dependían de la caza de
animales migratorios y las consecuencias de perderse estos
acontecimientos suponía el hambre. «Necesitaban tener en cuenta las
temporadas cuidadosamente para estar preparados para cuando ese recurso
alimenticio estuviera a mano, por lo que un calendario estacional tiene
sentido», dice Gaffney.
Actualización 16-07-13: Vídeo.
Descubierto en Escocia el calendario más antiguo del mundo
Actualización 16-07-13: Video.
Warren Field - The Beginning of Time?
Vídeo YouTube por
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Prehistoria Universal > L.R.2.5 nº 38.