Calendar

Alexander Marshack sees in the scorings and tally marks on Paleolithic fossils and artifacts the beginnings of time recording. With Neolithic domestication, systematic time reckoning allowed farming practices to fit local moisture and temperature patterns. Such concerns and efforts are suggested at Stonehenge in England, where, beginning about five thousand years ago, massive stones were arranged in geometric patterns. While interpretations of the site vary, its main axis includes an alignment to the June solstice sunrise, the day of longest sunlight.

Small-scale and nonliterate societies such as the Nuer of Africa emphasize a sensitivity and responsiveness to seasonal cycles that E. E. Evans-Pritchard calls "ecological time." Such calendars are characterized by:

1. space-time (the fusing of concepts of time with the space accessed and occupied in that time);
2. fuzzy-bordered seasons (increasing rains gradually transform dry season to wet);
3. "layered" observations of synchronous events at different ecological levels (for example, the bloom of plant species coincident with the movement of fish or game); and
4. diachronic sequences, such as episodic faunal or floral changes or consecutive astronomical observations (for example, advancing stellar positions, changes in the Moon's position and shape, or the movement of the Sun on the horizon).