Stone age Scots 'first to master time'

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 unibirmingham el 12/07/2013 añadido a Paleo Vídeos > Prehistoria Universal > L.R.2.5 nº 38.