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Rosy Fingered Dawn
With the moon central to early man’s measurements
of time unsurprisingly the very word month is an Old
English word that means moon. Primitive societies
tended to name the months after the activities carried
out at that time of the year. The Venerable Bede
recorded in 725 AD that in the pre-Christian era the
Anglo-Saxons called February fill brook and May
the month of the three milkings. We also know that
January was the wolf month when hungry wolves
strayed into the villages from the forests in search
of food.
Back in Siberia, in Yakutia, whose modern capital
Yakutsk is often earth’s coldest city, the month was
fixed as 30 days long and divided into the New Half
and the Old Half. The days took on colourful names
based on what the moon looked like. From "Glittering
like the eyelash of a maiden" through "Sharp like the
horn of a three-year-old cow" to "Like a far-off
neighbour's cooking pot". Maritime Chukchi hunted
whales and for all sailors dawn is very important –
sailors can tell a lot about the winds and the weather
from the dawn sky. So of the 22 unevenly spaced
hours in the Chukchi day the greatest number is at
dawn. We also see this in Homer's Odyssey where
"Rosy-fingered Dawn"
and
"Golden-throned Dawn"
are goddesses who wake at successive times, to drive
their chariots across the sky.
This weekend, as they do each year, people will
gather at Stonehenge to watch the sun rise on the
longest day – the Summer Solstice. Around 5000
years ago these great stone structures called megaliths
sprang up around the world from Mexico to the
Wiltshire plains and although we don’t quite know
the exact purpose of such sites each can be interpreted
as a form of calendar. Around the world the solstices,
equinoxes and the cross-quarter days midway
between these four special days were of particular
importance to ancient timekeepers. In the Iron-Age
Celtic language of pre-Christian Ireland the quarter
days, (solstices and equinoxes), were Midwinter
or Yule, Ostara (Spring), Midsummer and Mabon
(Autumn). The cross-quarter days were Imbolc
(February), Beltane (May), Lughnasa (August) and
Samhain (November). Later in Britain the Quarter
Days were called Christmas, Lady Day (25 March),
Midsummer Day (24 June) and Michaelmas
(29 September) and the cross-quarter days became
May Day (1 May), Lammas (1 August), All Hallows
(1 November) and Candlemas (2 February),
Back in the 1920s British archaeologists found the
remains of huge annual feasts at Iron Age sites.
Pollen evidence shows that the feasts were held at the
beginning of August. This is believed to be evidence
of Lammas Feasts when collective herds were
rounded up, boundaries marked and marriages made.
The Ingapirca Calendar Rock
At the Incan archaeological site of the
Temple of the Sun and Moon in the
Ecuadorian Andes at Ingapirca, stones
like this acted as lunar calendars.
28 holes filled with water reflected
the moon each night in turn .