What Time Is It?
What would you say if I asked you what time it is? Would you say something like, it is 3 o'clock? What about what day is it? Maybe Tuesday would be your answer. Both of those answers would hopefully be correct. However, if you were to ask those same questions to people in the distant past you would have gotten much different answers.
Time is a strange thing. And the busy nature of the modern world demands that we know the time and day so that we can be at appointments, work or dinner at appropriate times. Not something we think about much. We just accept it as the norm.
The people only a few generations back were less concerned with the exact time and were more concerned with which part of the day it was. Is it morning, noon or night? Now let's go much farther back in time and things like, which day of the week it is, wasn't even a concept yet. People then were more concerned with is it spring, summer or fall.
We break our day up down to the minute. In ancient times their needs for time keeping were much different. They weren't concerned with getting fired for being repeatedly late to work. They were concerned with when to plant food, when will the salmon start running, when will the birds migrate through and do they have enough time to gather firewood for the coming winter.
Yes your concepts of time are quite different than they were in the distant past. If you were to be thrust back into a situation where there were no more electronics very quickly your importants on what time it is would quickly shift to that of your forefathers. The day of the week would be the first thing you would lose. No longer is Saturday any different that Wednesday. That would no longer matter.
It is strange that the hour of the day would lose relevance much more slowly than the day. The time of day would be less exact, that is for sure but it would still be important to know and the position of the Sun in the sky would help us with that. But Tuesday, pffft. Who cares.
Ancient people had their own form of clocks, but they were nothing like ours today. Nature was their time keeper. Nature told them everything. They looked to nature and used it as their clock and calendar.
When were you born? March! Well and ancient human would have connected their birth with a more general time. It would be associated with possible the budding out of the forest. These natural calendar markers we varied and many and of course varied greatly by region. Different flora and Fauna, and different local weather patterns demanded different clues depending on your location on the planet.
If you want to learn a technique to help with the time of day, you can take a look on this page to help with knowing how to break up the day. Sunset Estimation Trick! However, the rest of this article will focus on telling the time of year and how to make a primitive calendar of sorts to let you keep track of the time of year when the battery in your phone finally quits.
Now that we know how important time is to survival in ancient times, let's set up a system to tell us, time, without having to remember to mark down manually each day of the year.
To do this you will have to build Stonehenge. Ok, not really, but we will need to build a Stonehenge like structure. It need not be as heavy and burdensome to build.
Most everyone knows the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. But few people pay attention to WHERE in the East it rises? Where it rises is the key to setting up a Stonehenge like calendar.
So you will need a large circle. The larger the circle allows for a more precise measurement of where the sun rises on the horizon. A clear view of the horizon is required for best accuracy but you make do with what your environment deals out.
So, you have a large circle and you also need to mark the exact center of the circle. With your eye at the center each day you will notice where the sun rises. And you will notice each day it moves just a little bit further north or south depending on the time of year and your location on the earth.
Each day, mark its rise location. There are four important points you will need to mark on the circle. These four points will mark the spring (vernal) equinox, the fall equinox, the spring solstice and the fall solstice.
The spring solstice in the northern hemisphere occurs when the sun no longer rises further north than the day before. Once this occurs the sun appear to pause and will then begin to rise slightly further South each day. So your most northern mark will be the same each year. When the sunrise reaches that point you will know the days are the longest they will be for the year and the sun will begin rising slightly further South each day. That is the spring solstice.
Be aware that the hottest days of summer do not occur at this point in time. Weather lags behind.
Now likewise when the sun reaches its most southerly rise location that is the winter Solstice. And again it lags behind the average coldest days of the winter.
The next two days we will mark are the equinoxes. Once every six months the hours from sunrise to sunset will be 12 hours apart. Which day this happens on depends on your location. But for most people in the northern Hemisphere this will occur in March (spring equinox) and once in September (fall equinox). Determining the two equinoxes is a bit more difficult by watching the sky. Luckily for use all the work has already been done and you can simply wait 91 days after the solstice and mark the sunrise then. And forever more you will have a calendar that divides the year into consistent unchanging parts.
However, you are not done. More points can be marked. However, these points will vary by region and I can't tell you when they occur because they are different for each location. But these extra calendar marks will be very important.
For example, you may notice that it is best to plant a certain crop earlier than the spring Solstice. Mark that date on your solar calendar and you have a good idea when it is proper time to plant your crop.
Some crops are more cold hardy so you may have multiple points to mark various planting times. Notice the number of spokes in the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. Each of those spokes meant something to the people of Wyoming in the past. Not all spokes were related to food but just from that picture you get a very good understanding of what I am talking about building as a SHTF calendar.
To use the calendar you would sit at its center at daybreak or dusk and mark the appearance of the sun or possibly key stars as they broke the horizon for the first time that day. And the advantage of their calendar is that it doesn't need to be replaced every single year.
We humans have always craved a method of time keeping. And having a watch or a calendar helps to stabilize our place in the world. Over time your simple calendar will likely grow to include more points on the horizon just as the Indians aka native Americans did on their wheel.
You will be necessity be quickly moved back in time to a time when life was much differnet than it is now and your connection with the natural world will grow and be transformed much quicker than you would have ever imagined. Either that will happen or you will die. The choice is yours.
The people only a few generations back were less concerned with the exact time and were more concerned with which part of the day it was. Is it morning, noon or night? Now let's go much farther back in time and things like, which day of the week it is, wasn't even a concept yet. People then were more concerned with is it spring, summer or fall.
We break our day up down to the minute. In ancient times their needs for time keeping were much different. They weren't concerned with getting fired for being repeatedly late to work. They were concerned with when to plant food, when will the salmon start running, when will the birds migrate through and do they have enough time to gather firewood for the coming winter.
Yes your concepts of time are quite different than they were in the distant past. If you were to be thrust back into a situation where there were no more electronics very quickly your importants on what time it is would quickly shift to that of your forefathers. The day of the week would be the first thing you would lose. No longer is Saturday any different that Wednesday. That would no longer matter.
It is strange that the hour of the day would lose relevance much more slowly than the day. The time of day would be less exact, that is for sure but it would still be important to know and the position of the Sun in the sky would help us with that. But Tuesday, pffft. Who cares.
Ancient people had their own form of clocks, but they were nothing like ours today. Nature was their time keeper. Nature told them everything. They looked to nature and used it as their clock and calendar.
When were you born? March! Well and ancient human would have connected their birth with a more general time. It would be associated with possible the budding out of the forest. These natural calendar markers we varied and many and of course varied greatly by region. Different flora and Fauna, and different local weather patterns demanded different clues depending on your location on the planet.
If you want to learn a technique to help with the time of day, you can take a look on this page to help with knowing how to break up the day. Sunset Estimation Trick! However, the rest of this article will focus on telling the time of year and how to make a primitive calendar of sorts to let you keep track of the time of year when the battery in your phone finally quits.
Now that we know how important time is to survival in ancient times, let's set up a system to tell us, time, without having to remember to mark down manually each day of the year.
To do this you will have to build Stonehenge. Ok, not really, but we will need to build a Stonehenge like structure. It need not be as heavy and burdensome to build.
On a side note: I find it laughable every time new stonehenge like structures are found, how the archiologist seem to immediately jump to the conclusion that these ancient structure are always ceremonial and always indicate worship of nature or a sun God of some sort. Of course these religious beliefs did occur in numerous cultures, which unfortunately make dispelling these baseless assumptions in other cultures more difficult to dispell. Once they have been suggested by the "experts" they seem to be written in stone!
Most everyone knows the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. But few people pay attention to WHERE in the East it rises? Where it rises is the key to setting up a Stonehenge like calendar.
So you will need a large circle. The larger the circle allows for a more precise measurement of where the sun rises on the horizon. A clear view of the horizon is required for best accuracy but you make do with what your environment deals out.
So, you have a large circle and you also need to mark the exact center of the circle. With your eye at the center each day you will notice where the sun rises. And you will notice each day it moves just a little bit further north or south depending on the time of year and your location on the earth.
Each day, mark its rise location. There are four important points you will need to mark on the circle. These four points will mark the spring (vernal) equinox, the fall equinox, the spring solstice and the fall solstice.
The spring solstice in the northern hemisphere occurs when the sun no longer rises further north than the day before. Once this occurs the sun appear to pause and will then begin to rise slightly further South each day. So your most northern mark will be the same each year. When the sunrise reaches that point you will know the days are the longest they will be for the year and the sun will begin rising slightly further South each day. That is the spring solstice.
Be aware that the hottest days of summer do not occur at this point in time. Weather lags behind.
Now likewise when the sun reaches its most southerly rise location that is the winter Solstice. And again it lags behind the average coldest days of the winter.
The next two days we will mark are the equinoxes. Once every six months the hours from sunrise to sunset will be 12 hours apart. Which day this happens on depends on your location. But for most people in the northern Hemisphere this will occur in March (spring equinox) and once in September (fall equinox). Determining the two equinoxes is a bit more difficult by watching the sky. Luckily for use all the work has already been done and you can simply wait 91 days after the solstice and mark the sunrise then. And forever more you will have a calendar that divides the year into consistent unchanging parts.
However, you are not done. More points can be marked. However, these points will vary by region and I can't tell you when they occur because they are different for each location. But these extra calendar marks will be very important.
For example, you may notice that it is best to plant a certain crop earlier than the spring Solstice. Mark that date on your solar calendar and you have a good idea when it is proper time to plant your crop.
To use the calendar you would sit at its center at daybreak or dusk and mark the appearance of the sun or possibly key stars as they broke the horizon for the first time that day. And the advantage of their calendar is that it doesn't need to be replaced every single year.
We humans have always craved a method of time keeping. And having a watch or a calendar helps to stabilize our place in the world. Over time your simple calendar will likely grow to include more points on the horizon just as the Indians aka native Americans did on their wheel.
You will be necessity be quickly moved back in time to a time when life was much differnet than it is now and your connection with the natural world will grow and be transformed much quicker than you would have ever imagined. Either that will happen or you will die. The choice is yours.
