Scientific test: Newgrange solstice indicator

A PROPOSAL:

HOW TO SCIENTIFICALLY TEST 

THE PRECISION AND ACCURACY

OF THE NEOLITHIC WINTER SOLSTICE DETECTOR 

AT NEWGRANGE, IRELAND
By Rick Doble

Diagram of Newgrange passage and solstice light from the side.
(Irish Art History Section, Professional Development Service for Teachers, P.D.S.T., Ireland)

INTRODUCTION

It is my belief that the passageway and specially designed baffled 'roof-box' at Newgrange Ireland could determine the specific day of the Winter Solstice in real time. And if this is true, it means that this Neolithic science was thousands of years ahead of its time and more advanced, in this regard, than Greek or Roman astronomy. Today we now have the tools to test this hypothesis scientifically. Later in this article, I spell out ways that it could be tested.

When the Winter Solstice sunrise lit the passageway at Newgrange Ireland around the time of the solstice, it probably had religious and ritual significance. However, it is important to understand that the Newgrange structure was also a scientific instrument. It accurately 'captured' the Winter Solstice light using the well-crafted baffled roof-box that lit the carefully made passageway inside the structure and only did so when the sunrise was close to the day of the solstice. And when it did capture this sunlight, it magnified it. 

It is not well understood today but determining the day of the Winter Solstice in real time was virtually impossible until recently. For almost a week there is only a slight difference in the sunrise position on the horizon, the length of the days only vary by seconds and atmospheric refraction can distort observation. So, at the time of the winter solstice, the sun barely moves (i.e., the sun's declination). In fact the word solstice comes from the Latin 'solstitium' meaning "point at which the sun seems to stand still" (dictionary.com). Please see the Afterword for more detail. 

The Greeks and Romans could and did determine the day of the solstice after the fact by observing the position of the sun many days before and after the time of the solstice and then interpolating the actual day. However, they could not determine the actual day in real time. 

Nevertheless, I believe the clever baffled roof-box and magnification of the light at Newgrange may have been enough to allow Neolithic experts to determine the exact day of the solstice in real time. 

NOTE: Since the roof-box could capture sunrise light from about two days before the day of the solstice and two days after, some have interpreted this to mean that these Neolithic people were only interested in an approximate identification of the time of the solstice and not the exact day (see the following quote). I feel this is a mistake. It is my contention that each day before, during, and after the solstice could be identified individually. But cloudy days would have caused a problem. Yet with five days to work with, there was almost always at least one clear day that could be identified and used to calculate the actual day.

CURRENT OPINION DOES NOT AGREE
THAT THE DAY OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE 
COULD BE DETERMINED IN REAL TIME

As I write this article there is agreement by experts that the time *around* the Winter Solstice could be indicated by Newgrange, but that's as much as they are willing to say.

The current opinion about the accuracy of Newgrange is expressed by T. P. Ray in his article about Newgrange. "Megalithic man was interested in marking the southern limits in declination of the sun and moon, albeit approximately. Such low accuracies suggest that ancient man's interest in these bodies may have been ritualistic rather than for the purpose of calendar construction."
Ray, T. P. The winter solstice phenomenon at Newgrange, Ireland: accident or design?  School of Cosmic Physics, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

But, as I have said, I believe that careful testing will show that Newgrange was quite accurate and could determine the day of the Winter Solstice in real time. I think that my hypothesis can be scientifically tested. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FROM THE MEDIA ABOUT THE PRECISION OF NEWGRANGE

Ireland, 3200 B.C.
On roughly four days every year, the Winter Solstice sun pokes through the top of this Stone Age monument and onto the floor of the interior chamber, filling the ancient temple with light for about 17 minutes. Built before Stonehenge, Newgrange was likely used to track the passing of the years with a precision ahead of its time. With an earthen mound and stone forming passageways and chambers inside Newgrange, the site likely also served as a passage tomb and ceremonial location as well as being a highly engineered clock.
Newcombup, Tim. Popular Mechanics, September 30, 2022.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a35867403/ancient-architecture/

The Winter Solstice Light December 2013.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2013_Solstice_Newgrange.jpg

GENERAL IDEAS AND CONCERNS
FOR A STUDY OF THE ACCURACY
OF THE SOLSTICE INDICATORS AT NEWGRANGE:

Nine years ago I wrote an article stating that it was possible that the passage tomb at Newgrange could determine the day of the Winter Solstice in real time. This article was reprinted in Newgrange.com. Now I believe new technology could, in fact, provide hard proof.

https://www.newgrange.com/winter-solstice-newgrange.htm

I think a university archaeological program or other such research group should write a proposal and get funding for a project that will prove or disprove the precision of the Newgrange passageway and roof-box.  

NEW TECHNOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY 2.0: 

Today, using the tools of Archeology 2.0 such as photogrammetry and computer simulations, this could be studied with extreme precision. Photogrammetry is now capable of making a precise 3D computer representation, accurate to millimeters. Then simulations of the sunrise light on the day of the Winter Solstice plus simulations of the days before and after the time of the solstice could show how each particular sunrise was being displayed in the passageway.

It is my guess that for two days before the Winter Solstice and two days after the light was distinctly different from the exact day of the solstice light. Furthermore, thee days surrounding the day of the solstice were distinctly different from each other. I also believe there was a reason for knowing the characteristics of the light in the days before and after. If the sky was cloudy on the day of the solstice, the day itself could still be determined by knowing the characteristics of the other days around the time of the solstice, and knowing which day was which.

Detailed drawing of Newgrange passage showing the precise placement of stones and the shaft of solstice light. Used with permission:
http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/irelandnewgrange.htm 

As I point out in my article, the setup at Newgrange with the roof-box and passageway yielded a lot of information such as the width of the light, the intensity of the light, the speed of the light as it moved down the passageway and retreated, the furthest reach of the light, the way that the stone walls and spiral engravings were lit, etc. The design magnifies the light and its movement -- and magnifications yield much more information. I believe that this amount of information would be enough to distinguish one day from another.

Another important point is the time of each sunrise before, during, and after the solstice. The times would be different and could possibly be detected based on the position of the stars.

While making a computer model of the passageway is, today, not all that difficult, simulating the solstice light could be quite difficult. Because, for this kind of simulation, the most important element will be the precision of the light coming through the roof-box and the way this simulated sunlight lights up the passageway. This must be as accurate as possible otherwise the project is pointless. 

Passage leading towards chamber of Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:County_Meath_-_Newgrange_-_20220216134014.jpg

Passage leading out from chamber of Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:County_Meath_-_Newgrange_-_20220213132707.jpg

The angle of the light is especially important as there is a very slight change in that angle with each sunrise. When the light is magnified and enters the passageway at a low angle in relation to the stone walls that make up the passageway, there could be a marked difference from day to day. I am a professional photographer who has written three books on photography. I know that the angle of light in relation to the surface of an object can reveal subtle details that can be quite different with just a small change in the angle of light.

State-of-the-art composite videos, made from dozens of cameras placed along the passageway during the time of the solstice, could be used as a reference both in the timing and the accuracy of the shaft of light. This might be the best way to ensure that the simulated light matches the actual light around the time of the solstice.

Also when building a model, it is also important to take into account the change in the sun's position about 5000 years ago. See NASA's assessment next:

Today the first light enters about four minutes after sunrise, but calculations based on the precession of the Earth show that 5,000 years ago, first light would have entered exactly at sunrise.

Document of the US space agency NASA. 
https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/SED11/P8Newgrange.pdf

All solar simulations should match the earlier times of sunrise, when Newgrange was functioning, based on NASA's calculations.

Triple spiral carved in a stone in the chamber at the end of the passage. According to legend, the light from the sun illuminated these triple spirals on the day of the solstice. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celtic_spiral.jpg

SPECIFIC WAYS TO TEST MY HYPOTHESES

HOW TO TEST:

Once the photogrammetric and computer simulation of the solstice light are created, it may be possible to objectively test the ability of the Newgrange passageway and roof-box to indicate the day of the Winter Solstice.

While I am hardly an expert when it comes to designing experiments, here are suggestions about how this could be tested.

PLAN A:

A number of professional people (I would suggest photographers or people who work with lighting) could view a simulated computer sequence of light coming into the passageway and then retreating with each day clearly labeled. I suggest using professionals because we can assume that the Neolithic viewers of these sequences were also professionals. After today's viewers have become familiar with these sequences, they could then be tested by viewing each sequence at random without a label and stating which sequence it was. 

PLAN B:

Another way to test this could be to make a large light that would accurately simulate the angle, the movement and the brightness of the Winter Solstice sunrise, along with the sunrise light from the two days before and after. This light would shine through the roof-box and down the actual passageway. As with Plan A, experts could, at first, view the light in a clearly labeled sequence. Then experts could be positioned in the passageway as the light was shown at random to see if they could tell the difference. 

THE FINAL RESULT:

Based on the correctness of the experts' ability to distinguish between these random showings, a scorecard could be created that would tell us whether they were able to identify the day of the solstice and if they were able to distinguish between the days before and after the solstice.

PLAN C:

A stand-alone computer model could be created. Then a computer rating system could be devised that would rate each one of the lighting effects every 15 seconds such as the width of the light, the speed of the light's movement up the passageway, the length of the shadows, the depth or darkness of the shadows, the illumination on the walls, etc. Then the furthest reach of the light would be logged and followed by a rating of these same characteristics as the light retreated. The final task would be to put this data altogether to determine if there was a significant difference from day to day.

PLAN D:

A combination of the above or another approach I have not thought of.

MY ARTICLE:

As I said, in 2015 I wrote an article which has been reprinted in the Newgrange.com website, about the accuracy of the Newgrange passageway in determining the Winter Solstice.

Computing the Winter Solstice at Newgrange:

Was Neolithic Science Equal To or Better Than Ancient Greek or Roman Science?

https://www.newgrange.com/winter-solstice-newgrange.htm

THE DISCOVERY PROGRAMME "3D MODEL OF SOLSTICE AT NEWGRANGE":

The Discovery Programme in Ireland has already made a "3d Model Of Solstice At Newgrange". 

https://discoveryprogramme.ie/2016/11/26/3d-model-of-solstice-at-newgrange/

Overhead diagram of Newgrange passage and solstice light.
(Irish Art History Section, Professional Development Service for Teachers, P.D.S.T., Ireland)

PUTTING A PROPOSAL AND STUDY TOGETHER

HERE IS WHAT I SUGGEST: 

An archaeological or research program should write a specific proposal and acquire funding. I have written a number of proposals in the past and would be glad to write a suggested draft of the proposal. Or I could work together with members of an academic team. I can also write the finished draft. After that I would be glad to work on the project if it is funded in any manner that would be helpful.

HOW I SHOULD BE CREDITED:

I would need to be credited for the idea if it is put together and also for writing the proposal if I do some or all of the writing. If the proposal is accepted, I would be glad to work with people in the project.

MY INTEREST:

I have a Master's Degree in Communication with a minor in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, plus a B.A. in English with Honors in Creative Writing, also from UNC-CH.

I am an independent researcher who is interested in this subject because I have been writing a blog for over eleven years about the human experience of time. I have always felt that ancient people were much smarter than they have been given credit for and also that a concept of time was very important to them. So, when I studied Newgrange, I felt that I had found an important example of these ideas.

https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/

PLEASE NOTE:

While other people have suggested that the Newgrange design could determine the day of the Winter Solstice in real time, I do not believe they have gone into detail nearly as much as I have to make the case. For example, I have covered the difficulty of measuring the day of the solstice, the design and construction of the roof-box and passageway as a scientific instrument, its ability to magnify the sunlight's angle and movement and the wealth of information that resulted.

As I have said the Greeks and Romans could not determine the day of the Winter Solstice in real time. In my 2015 article, I believe I am the first person to make this point. They could determine it after the fact but not in real time. The Roman Saturnalia Festival, for example, occurred during the week of the solstice but it did not celebrate a particular solstice day. 

 

So this means that in this particular case at least, in Ireland and during the Winter Solstice, Neolithic science and technology might have been more advanced that of the Greeks and Roman's 3000 years later. And if this is true, it signals a major change in our perception of Neolithic culture and its level of technology.

"Sketch of a cross section of the Newgrange passage grave
made by William Frederick Wakeman."
Quote from commons.wikimedia.org

Wakeman's Handbook of Irish Antiquities (1903). p. 85.
 http://www.archive.org/details/wakemanshandbook00wake

_______________________________

AFTERWORD

PLEASE SEE MY FULL DETAILED ARTICLE IN THIS BLOG

https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2015/03/computing-winter-solstice-at-newgrange.html

ABOUT THE WINTER SOLSTICE IN GREECE AND ROME

I have made the point in many other articles that prehistoric people were smarter than previously thought and they did remarkable things when they were necessary. The very short winter days in Ireland meant that knowing the day of the Winter Solstice was important as it signaled the beginning of the new year and so allowed accurate yearly planning for agriculture. 

In Greece and Rome the days were much longer in the winter and the weather less severe, so they did not feel the same urgency.

SCIENCE IN THE NEOLITHIC ERA

“In the case of Neolithic astronomy, we are dealing
not with the prehistory of science,
but with science in prehistory.”
McClellan, James E. III, Dorn, Harold. Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction, Edition 2. JHU Press, June 2006, page 23. 

I believe the specially designed baffled roof-box and passageway at Newgrange created a well developed scientific instrument. Furthermore, the alignment of the entire structure with the Winter Solstice sunrise was precise. Plus the well constructed structure provided a reliable environment that was stable and consistent year after year. 

“Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be.”

Galileo Galilei

The creation of the solid passageway, walls, floor and ceiling meant that there were clear consistent points that allowed a comparison of the light from one day to the next and one year to the next. And comparison is one way to measure.

One of the standard requirements of experimental science is to eliminate all variables other than the phenomena that is bing studied so that the outcome is due to the experiment and nothing more. The Newgrange baffled roof-box and passageway provided an unmovable stable environment so that the manipulation of the light by the Newgrange instrument on consecutive days could be reliably compared.

[Left} The special roof-box is on top above the passageway. During the winter solstice, it is light through the roof-box that illuminates the passageway NOT light from the passageway entrance.

[Right] Close-up of the roof-box. It is set back so that the walls act like a baffle and only allow light through the roof-box during the solstice.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bild_Newgrange-trippelspiral.jpg

PERSONAL NOTE

As I was studying pictures of Newgrange and the solstice light, it struck me that several very modern devices have used/use a beam of light in a similar was. A beam of light shown down a long pathway was used in Newgrange but also in the famous Michelson-Morley experiment that proved Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity plus the very modern Gravity Wave detectors that have just proved Einsteins ideas about gravity in his General Theory of Relativity.

[Top] Michelson–Morley experimental device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Michelson1881c.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment

[Bottom] A gravitational-wave detector.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LIGO_schematic_(multilang).svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational-wave_observatory

Thought Experiments & Imagination

Thought Experiments 

How To Use Your Imagination 

to Understand the Ancient Past

Einstein and a light beam.
Around the age of 16, Einstein began to imagine what he would see if he were riding a beam of light. Ten years later, due to his thought experiment, he made a breakthrough in his understanding which led to his Theory of Special Relativity. 
Your cell phone and many other things could not operate without his discovery.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luxor_Light_Beam_by_inSapphoWeTrust.jpeg

This article is for people who are studying prehistory. But it also applies to anyone who is working with a problem in science and wants to experiment with a new approach.

To investigate the past, we must rid ourselves of our modern point of view and try to look at the past from its own point of view. Unless we can do this we will not be able to grasp how the past transpired and also how it connects to the modern day. 

One way to free ourselves

is to use our imaginations. 

However, your imagination is only one of many tools in your toolbox. Logic is another tool, as is finding direct and indirect evidence, following hunches and intuitions, and locating opinions from respected authorities. In an effort to prove something, you will probably use a combination of tools.

In this article, I will start with examples of important "thought experiments," experiments by Galileo and Einstein, in which they imagined a set of circumstances. What they revealed and discovered via their imaginings changed science and our modern world. 

I believe that people who investigate prehistory can also benefit from this approach. They can use their imagination to go back in time and then place themselves in that time period. If you suddenly time-traveled to a Mesopotamian city 5000 years ago standing on a street corner, what would you see, what would you hear, what would you smell, what would you touch?

(Be sure to read the next blog which will be a detailed fictional time-travel journey to Mesopotamia.)

ABOUT THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS

Thought experiments, as they are called, have a surprisingly long recorded history. To prove a point or to work out a problem, the experimenter imagines a situation that reveals information. One of the first recorded such experiments came from Galileo and it was very important.

GALILEO'S SHIP

Galileo's 1632 book, Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems, considered all the common arguments against the new idea that the Earth rotates at a rapid speed around its axis and also orbits the Sun. This was the book that got him into trouble with the church.

"One of the contrary arguments was that if the Earth were spinning on its axis, then we would all be moving to the East at thousands of kilometers per hour so a ball dropped straight down from a tower would land West of the tower which would have moved some distance East in the interim."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_ship

For Galileo's thought experiment to work, he had to find a vehicle that moved smoothly without bumps or jerking. It had to be a motion that would not be felt. In the modern world, we are used to this such as riding in cars or trains or planes. But in Galileo's time, boats were the best vehicles for illustrating his ideas. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lybska_Svan.jpeg

Galileo created a character in his book, whom he named Salviati, to make his argument. He explained why we do not feel this motion, using a thought experiment. Salviati says:

Shut yourself up with some friend in the main cabin below decks on some large ship, and have with you there some flies, butterflies, and other small flying animals. Have a large bowl of water with some fish in it; hang up a bottle that empties drop by drop into a wide vessel beneath it. With the ship standing still, observe carefully how the little animals fly with equal speed to all sides of the cabin. The fish swim indifferently in all directions; the drops fall into the vessel beneath; and, in throwing something to your friend, you need to throw it no more strongly in one direction than another, the distances being equal; jumping with your feet together, you pass equal spaces in every direction. When you have observed all these things carefully (though doubtless when the ship is standing still everything must happen in this way), have the ship proceed with any speed you like, so long as the motion is uniform and not fluctuating this way and that. You will discover not the least change in all the effects named, nor could you tell from any of them whether the ship was moving or standing still. In jumping, you will pass on the floor the same spaces as before, nor will you make larger jumps toward the stern than toward the prow even though the ship is moving quite rapidly, despite the fact that during the time that you are in the air the floor under you will be going in a direction opposite to your jump.

Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), translated by Stillman Drake, University of California Press, 1953, pp. 186 - 187 (Second Day).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_ship

With this experiment, he showed how the Earth could constantly rotate 1,000 miles an hour and also move over 60,000 miles an hour in its orbit around the sun. But we on Earth would not feel it.

"What did Galileo's thought experiment prove?

"Galileo concluded that all objects on Earth and within its atmosphere share in its motion. As a result, they are unaffected by its motion, just as if they were stationary."

Galileo's Thought Experiment

https://www.pbslearningmedia.org

EINSTEIN'S THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS

Einstein's thought experiment (next) was equally important and was, in many ways, similar to what Galileo had imagined. In both cases, the experimenter is inside a moving vehicle but the environment inside that vehicle is normal and the same as if the vehicle were still. So the environment of the interior is not influenced by the motion of the vehicle.

However, there was a significant difference between them. In Galileo's case, he was explaining something he had already decided. He believed the Earth went around the Sun and was looking for a clear way to explain it. In Einstein's case, he had made a discovery, because his thought experiment led directly to new ideas in the Theory of Special  Relativity. 

In this theory, Einstein proved that time was relative. But even though he had this revelation, he still had to do the hard work of figuring out the math, which he did immediately after this event.

The street car in Bern Switzerland
and the Zytglogge (bell ringing) clock above it.
The clock was made around 1400 CE.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BTG03wiki.jpg

“[Einstein's] first thought experiment has to do with time and stems from a thought Einstein had while riding home in a streetcar in Bern. He saw the clock tower passing behind him and wondered how the clock would appear as the streetcar moved faster and faster,” writes Chris Impey of Teach Astronomy.

https://www.feelguide.com/2016/09/08/the-swiss-clocktower-that-inspired-einsteins-revolutionary-experiment-changed-history-forever/

"Einstein heard the toll one evening in May 1905. He had been confounded by a scientific paradox for a decade, and when he gazed up at the tower he suddenly imagined an unimaginable scene. What, he wondered, would happen if a streetcar raced away from the tower at the speed of light?

"If he was sitting in the streetcar, he realized, his watch would still be ticking. But looking back at the tower, the clock – and time – would seem to have stopped. It was a breakthrough moment."

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20160901-the-clock-that-changed-the-meaning-of-time

Einstein's discovery was, in some ways, a combination of a thought experiment and idea-incubation. Idea-incubation means that you have been working on an idea, give up, and then suddenly the answer comes to you. Einstein had been thinking about light from the age of 16. He had wondered then what it would be like to ride a beam of light. So this idea had been rolling around in his head for some time. And on that fateful night, it came together.

I also find it fascinating that Einstein's imagination was kicked into high gear because of the sound of the clock's bell. It was a medieval clock in Bern Switzerland called Zytglogge and it had an ancient connection that reached back to the beginning of timekeeping and time itself. 

At the top of the clock tower in Bern, the Greek god of time, Chronos,
rings the specially made bell (installed in 1405) each hour.
He is a primeval god who created time itself.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Zytglogge_03.jpg

The clock was built with Ptolemy's approx. 2000-year-old ancient geocentric system. The clock's gearing was based on Ptolemy's Earth-centered astronomical geometry. But just as important, the bell that rang was rung by a mechanical model of the ancient Greek god of time, Chronos (where we get the word chronology). And Chronos was not just any old Greek god. He was a primeval god who, at the very beginning of creation, brought the world into being, and then time itself. [1]

While Einstein was well aware of Greek philosophy and drama, he may not have had a detailed knowledge of Greek mythology. This mythology contained many tellings of the same story which often conflicted, and it would have taken a good deal of research to understand the powers and importance of each god. It is my belief that imagination, intuition, and things like thought experiments can often connect to unconscious ideas and long-forgotten cultural narratives. In this case, Einstein's new ideas about time were connected with the Western history of time concepts back to the very beginning, the birth of time. 

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE STUDY OF PREHISTORY?

On the subject of studying prehistory author, Chris Gordon, had this to say.

"This is where the study of prehistory comes in — a method of UNLEARNING THE PRESENT [my emphasis] and developing an understanding of the past."

Gosden, Chris, 'The problems of prehistory', Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction, 1st edn, Very Short Introductions (Oxford, 2003; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Sept. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192803436.003.0002, accessed 29 Jan. 2023.

Part of the problem is that we are modern people and it is almost impossible to rid ourselves of our modern attitudes. 

To paraphrase what my friend Barbara Blake, a Ph.D., in Anthropology, said to me: our culture is so much a part of each of us that it is virtually impossible to rid ourselves of its influence. And many of our biases are so built-in, we may not be aware of them.

So with our imagination, we need to do two things. The first is to "unlearn the present" by mentally undressing and shedding our modern point of view.

Then next, with our imagination, try to go back into the ancient past and see it more clearly from the perspective of each time period and each culture. 

But to do this we need some ground rules.

The first task is to rid ourselves of outdated ideas about 'stone age', 'primitive', 'savage', and 'uncivilized' people. This needs to be done first before we can tackle more specific biases such as assumptions about various technologies, for example. 

But old ideas and attitudes are hard to shed.  Lewis H. Morgan wrote, more than a hundred years ago, that the evolution of humanity went from savagery to barbarism to civilization, meaning that the Neolithic cultures were barbaric and Paleolithic people were savages. And for many people, this attitude has remained. 

The second task is to forget air conditioning and refrigerators and cars and highways and soft mattresses and cell phones. When considering prehistory in particular, you will have to forgo most modern comforts. So you will need to forget even basic things such as running water and toilets. And you may need to keep a fire going constantly along with finding and storing wood. Also, imagine that instead of going to a store you have to make every tool and container you use. You will probably need to know how to make a variety of baskets. You grow all the food you eat and you make all your clothes. Every day you spend hours getting water and grinding grain and making bread.

The third task is to be open to the unexpected, to consider that in these harsh environments, ancient people might have created remarkable things or very different things that we would not expect. 

But the problem with understanding prehistory only gets worse and more difficult as you go back in time, into the Paleolithic, for example. Finding evidence and dating it is hard for the Upper Paleolithic, very hard for the Middle Paleolithic, and almost impossible for the Lower Paleolithic. Not only does evidence decay or is degraded or buried but the hominins involved are increasingly different.

So the study of prehistory might make use of imaginative tools because so much is hidden from us. By rethinking or reimagining the past, it is possible that we could see things that have been overlooked or connections that have not been made.

See an example of imaginative rethinking later in this article. This example describes a new insight into how the famous Australopithecus, Lucy, died.

A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE OF USING YOUR IMAGINATION

How I Developed The Idea

That A Neolithic Culture Could Be More Advanced

Than The Romans 3000 Years Later 

The winter solstice is not just a day on the calendar. Our local and much-loved weatherman, Skip Waters, made the point that the time period of the winter solstice occurs for about a week, not just a day. And that it was virtually impossible to know the specific day of the solstice through direct observation as there was only a few seconds' difference in the length of the day and a tiny degree difference in the position of the sun during that week. Measuring the sun's position was further complicated by atmospheric refraction. It was not until the 18th Century that the winter solstice could be determined optically by direct observation.

However, to everyone's surprise, archaeologists discovered that the Neolithic culture at Newgrange Ireland had somehow overcome these difficulties by building a huge passageway with a special roof-box that was aligned with the solstice sun. And this got me wondering if other cultures, even 3000 years later such as Rome, could do this.

Outside (top) and overview (bottom) of the passage tomb at Newgrange from 1897. It took another 70 years before Newgrange was fully understood, partly due to modern misconceptions about the capabilities of prehistoric people.

Coffey, George. Drawings of Newgrange from the late 1800s. Published in: The Dolmens of Ireland,, by William Copeland Borlase. Published by the University of Michigan Library (January 1, 1897).

NOTE: I have used Newgrange as an example many times in these articles because it illustrates so many things when dealing with prehistory: a Neolithic structure that was misunderstood for hundreds of years and then positive proof that it was a well-made and accurate device. 

To begin I read translations of Roman accounts about the week-long Saturnalia festival. The name comes from the Roman god Saturn. a god who was Roman and not an adoption of a Greek god. He was associated with time, the harvest, periodic renewal, and liberation. His festival comes at the end of the year and is a time for wild celebration. Today, the weekday, Saturday, is named for him because it is a time when we can relax, kick back and enjoy that the week has come to an end. 

Roman depictions of the god Saturn, an old man with a full beard, who was, among other things, the god of time. He held a sickle which was a symbol of harvest and bounty and also death and destruction. Bas-relief, 2nd century CE.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:0_Autel_d%C3%A9di%C3%A9_au_dieu_Malakb%C3%AAl_et_aux_dieux_de_Palmyra_-_Musei_Capitolini_%281b%29.JPG

The Saturnalia festival was a time when the darkness was celebrated as a joyous time. So, using my imagination, I put myself back into that time. What I saw as I walked through Rome was continuing darkness with no real change for about a week. It was the week that was celebrated and not the day. There were parties when special lamps were lit to light the darkness. Special foods were made, special songs were sung, and presents were exchanged. Then on December 25, when it was clear that the sun had stopped its winter decline and was now returning and getting brighter, that this later day was celebrated as the day of the sun's return.

But it seemed to me that the actual day of the solstice was not something that was determined nor was it that important to the Romans. What was important was the week-long festival, a time period of "solar standstill" (the Latin meaning of the word solstice).

But this relationship to the solstice was quite different in Ireland where the day was an hour and a half shorter than the solstice day in Rome. I did not have written accounts but I did have the carefully made building at Newgrange, which in a sense, could talk to me.

I imagined the cold climate of Northern Ireland and an agricultural way of life. How would you feel as the sun sank lower and it got dark earlier each day, when the plants had stopped growing and lost their leaves, and they appeared to be dead? Imagine what it would have felt like as the days got shorter and the temperature colder and colder. So when I imagined myself in Ireland during the time of the solstice, I felt fear and dread. What I needed was a way to be reassured that the Sun would return and crops would grow again.

So, I believe, the Irish built a huge, sophisticated, complex monument to determine the exact time of the solstice. 

The passageway at the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland.

While this looks crude to our modern eyes, the alignment and placement of the stones were exact and by magnifying the sun's angle and movement could determine the day of the solstice in real-time.

LEFT: "A section of the passage leading towards the chamber of the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland."

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Passage_leading_towards_chamber_of_Newgrange_passage_tomb_in_Ireland.jpg

RIGHT: The light of the solstice in the passageway in 2013.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2013_Solstice_Newgrange.jpg

After reading a description by the archaeologist Michael J. O'Kelly who discovered the solstice alignment of the Newgrange monument, I again put myself back in time. I stood in the Newgrange passageway, at the far end, as sunlight entered on the day of the winter solstice. I watched the sunlight quickly move toward me for about eight minutes until I was bathed in its light at the furthest reach of the hallway. And then I watched it retreat. This annual event would have been reassuring to these Neolithic people and it also signaled a profound bond between the Sun and the Earth. Clearly, this was a very different relationship than that of the Romans.

This led me to wonder if the Newgrange "instrument" as I have called it because it was like a scientific instrument, was more precise than what the Romans had. And my research seemed to bear this out. But if that were true, it completely changes the generally accepted timeline of Classical cultures vs. Neolithic cultures. It was always assumed that the Romans were far superior and more advanced in every way than the primitive, barbarian Neolithic people. And in many cases, the Romans were superior but perhaps not in this case. 

To put it simply, the Neolithic people felt a compelling need to create a precise accurate device that could indicate the exact day of the winter solstice. So they made such a device. The Romans did not feel such a need.

So my "imagination experiment" led me to research how the Romans did determine the day of the solstice. An expert on Roman astronomy said they could calculate the day of the solstice after the fact by interpolating measurements made before and after the solstice, but not in real-time as the people at Newgrange could. So if true, the Newgrange technology was superior 3000 years before the Romans.

Dr. Dennis Duke, "Four Lost Episodes in Ancient Solar Theory, Journal for the History of Astronomy," (2008)

http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~dduke/episodes3.pdf

A CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLE 

When I was writing this article, I wondered if there were any recent examples I could point to. So I thought about various scientific articles I had read. One study seemed like a good candidate. When I read it in depth I found that a key part of the study came about due to a man's imagination. A professor who had been working with the bones of the famous Australopithecus, Lucy, suddenly could see how she died, and knowing that also told him a lot about the way she and her people lived.

This is a perfect example of how to rethink a time period. Lucy, he decided, died because she fell from a high point in a tree. Nine orthopedic surgeons also looked at the bones and agreed that her fractures would have occurred due to a fall. So if what Dr. Kappelman says is true, and not all authorities agree, it changes many commonly held ideas about whether early hominins lived and slept in trees.

“I have taught this fossil since I was a grad student in the 1980s,” says John Kappelman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the study, which was published in the journal, Nature. “I knew these fractures were there, I just never thought to ask what had caused them. No one, as far as I know, has ever put out a theory of how she died.”

Lucy's bones, one of the most complete skeletons of early hominins.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucy_blackbg.jpg

“At one point, I had all these bones out and this idea just finally crystalized—I could see the fall, the position of her body when she hit, the impact,” says Kappelman. “For the very first time, I saw her as an individual and this wave of empathy hit me. For the first time, she was not just an isolated box of broken bones. I could actually picture how she died.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/lucy-tree-fall-human-ancestor

PUTTING YOUR IMAGINATION TO USE

As I have suggested, the best way to free yourself from a modern bias might be to use your imagination. I suggest, for example, that you go back in time to a prehistoric place and take off all your clothes. Then put on clothes that were probably common then. Do some research to find out what kind of clothes they wore. 

How does it feel to move and sit and work in those clothes, for example? How does the fabric or animal skin feel? Do you have shoes or a hat? What about a belt or pockets? What are they made of? How are they all put together?

HERE ARE SOME OTHER TIMES TO IMAGINE

-- Imagine a city in the world's first civilization, Mesopotamia

Next month read my next blog-article about time-traveling to Mesopotamia and walking around a city.

-- Imagine the Neolithic

Imagine you land in a small Neolithic village about 10,000 years ago.

-- Imagine the Mesolithic

Imagine you are part of a tribe of people who are hunter-gatherers for part of the year and settled in huts for other parts of the year.

-- Imagine the Upper Paleolithic

Imagine belonging to a tribe that lives in caves some of the time but is nomadic all year long.

-- Imagine the Lower Paleolithic

Imagine you are with hominins who are nomadic hunter-gatherers and often camp near or in Baobab trees on the African plains.

Time-travel to a time 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia
-- next article, next month.

This picture is a bird's eye view of a Mesopotamian city.
My next blog-article will be an imaginative walkthrough
 in such a city to see what we can see. :) [2]

[1] CHRONOS (also KHRONOS) was the primordial god of time. In the Orphic cosmogony, he emerged self-formed at the dawn of creation.

He and his consort, the serpentine goddess Ananke (Inevitability), enveloped the primordial world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea, and sky. After this act of creation, the couple circled the cosmos driving the rotation of heaven and the eternal passage of time. 

https://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Khronos.html

[2] brown_u_landscape.pdf

The AHA Moment: My Personal Story

The AHA! Moment: My Personal Story

The Aha Moment: definition
The moment or instant at which the solution to a problem or other significant realization becomes clear.
Also The Aha! Moment
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aha_moment

My Definition:
The AHA! moment is when your disparate ideas suddenly rearrange themselves together into a new and insightful pattern.

An enigmatic Rembrandt etching, showing, perhaps, 

a thinker receiving a sudden insight.

It's something that every artist, writer, scientist, thinker hopes will happen sooner or later. It usually comes after an extended period of work in an effort to solve a difficult problem. Frustrated, a person gives up and focuses their mind elsewhere. Then suddenly something triggers an insight and the various disconnected pieces of the puzzle now come together to form one coherent picture. 

After seven years of writing this blog about the human experience of time, I had one of these moments while driving through drenching thunderstorms as I was fleeing a monster hurricane. 


SO HERE IS MY STORY:

I had just finished writing several historical eBooks for a client at Upwork.com about the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, the Neolithic Revolution, Greek Mythology and Galileo. Each 10,000 word eBook was long enough to go into some detail but short enough that I would not get bogged down in endless minutia. It was the perfect assignment for me -- because I like to look for the big overview, the big picture, while also finding substantial facts and historical events to back up my conclusions. And after writing these eBooks I was musing about the many theories and discoveries that had become part of civilization today.

Then I started to think about my own ideas concerning the human experience of time -- the purpose of this blog, DeconstructingTime. I have been working on this subject for seven years. I was confident that I had mapped out a pretty good set of ideas and yet at the same time, I felt there was something missing. I wanted a larger hypothesis that could tie many, if not most, of my ideas together.

Around this time I also had begun to entertain a new point of view about the human condition. Rather than thinking of us as civilized people who occasionally succumbed to animal behavior, I began to think of us as basically animals who were doing their best to be civilized. And this switch in perspective opened up an entirely new way of looking at things.

Fresh from my eBook research, I thought of Mendeleev who put together the first working chart of the elements that make up all matter, a chart that is now known as the periodic table. He had put each element and what he knew about it, such as its atomic weight, on a card and then laid out these cards as though he was playing a kind of solitaire. He did this for a number of years until one night he had a dream and saw the entire periodic table almost perfectly arranged. 

"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place
did a correction later seem necessary." 
Dmitri Mendeleev

Mendeleev (left) and his notes about the periodic table. His work has become the basis for our understanding of the material world and is considered a milestone in scientific thought.

One of my own personal quests has been to go back as far as possible in history to find the moment when we Homo sapiens began to think about time in terms of past, present, and future and then, as a result, were able to make plans. I assumed that before that, like virtually all animals, Homo sapiens were locked into the present, into the here and now, and that they lived entirely in the moment. So before this, we/they could not plan. 

I also knew that after perhaps hundreds of thousands of years when we/they had emerged from their instinctual animal existence, they did develop modern languages with a full set of expressions, concepts, and metaphors to describe and work with time in a linear fashion, i.e., past, present, and future. And this allowed planning, coordinating and sharing, i.e., all the things that made Homo sapiens so powerful and dominant on the planet. In other words, language gave us the tools to work with time.

But the period in between our original animal existence and a fully developed language was a dark mystery. I could not imagine an early language nor could I imagine an initial or early developing sense of time.

Then as chance would have it, a huge hurricane, Hurricane Florence, threatened the home where I lived, and I had to leave in the middle of the night after getting an ominous phone message from the government. There was a mandatory evacuation order for my area of North Carolina.

Once I had loaded the car, locked up the house, and was on the road at 2 AM, I began to think about my work on the subject of time. Alone in my car with virtually no traffic, it was kind of dreamy but foreboding as well. To give myself something to think about I decided to talk to myself and see if I could make some headway. 

I have always been interested in the passage of time, starting perhaps with T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets which give the best definition of time that I know of. As I have quoted many times before in this blog, Eliot points out that time is always now -- and without the now moment time would not happen.

At the still point of the turning world.

Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards;

At the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.

And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered.

Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.

Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance,

And there is only the dance.

...

And all is always now

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, 1936,  Four Quartets

In the 1980s I had studied the time lapse photos of Eadweard Muybridge for two years and then made computer art based on his study of human locomotion. And as a photographer for fifty years, I understood time and timing because photography concerns itself with both. More recently I created an extensive study of what I call time-flow photography, photography in which I took pictures with long shutter speeds to show blur, motion, and the passage of time.

A reworked digital image from Muybridge's 

Woman in Motion photography series.

A candid photograph created entirely with slow shutter speed 

'time-flow' effects and not with software.

I had also made the connection between language and our concepts of time. I had written a blog about a year ago on that subject. In the process of writing, it became clear to me that language was in many ways the key, as it gave us humans the tools to conceive of time in complicated ways and also to express those concepts to others. But that was as far as I got.

How Our Concept of Time Is Embedded & Derived from Our Language 

https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2017/02/concept-of-time-embedded-in-language.html

For words are to thought what tools are to work; 

the product depends largely on the growth of the tools.

Will Durant, History of Civilization: Part 1

Then in the occasional bursts of heavy rain that made it almost impossible to see the road with my headlights, even though the wipers were going full speed, the first clue came to me. 

A hurricane track over the coast 

in North Carolina where I live.

I remembered reading that there was a tribe in the Amazon that spoke a very different language -- some called it a more basic language -- which no linguist or researcher had come across before. It did not follow any of the normally accepted rules that virtually all other languages followed. 

Around dawn after five hours on the dark road, I reached my destination, the home of a long time friend, Harry. Harry lived in Durham and had graciously allowed me and my wife, who was already there, to stay with him.


AFTER THE STORM

So my lonely night journey to escape the storm brought together a number of ideas.

I announced to Harry the following morning that I was going to use this time, while we waited out the storm, to find out about this tribe. A quick search of the Internet told me that the tribe was called the Piraha and that Daniel Everett, a kind of revolutionary linguist, was the accepted expert of their culture and language.

After watching everything I could on YouTube, listening to Dan Everett's TED talks, and reading numerous articles by Everett and others on the Internet, there it was: The Missing Piece. 

When I had read about the tribe years earlier, Everett had not formulated a comprehensive hypothesis of language. But now he had and to my incredible surprise, it was a perfect fit with my own ideas. It turned out that about six months earlier -- but about a year after I had written my own post about the connection between time and language -- Everett had written a book entitled, How Language Began. 

Without realizing it, I had laid out cards in my mind, as Mendeleev had done, yet there was this big blank card in the middle. But now the Piraha and the ideas of Dan Everett had filled this gap. 

Time reference is a universal property of language...
Jacqueline Lecarme, PH. D., Linguistics

The following is what I grasped from Everett's ideas:
Language is much much older than previously thought and goes back to the predecessors of us humans (Homo sapiens); it goes back to Homo erectus more than a million years earlier. Everett decided that altogether there were probably three language stages: G1, G2, and G3. The languages today are all G3 except that of the Piraha which is an earlier language, a G2 language. Everett suspects there are many more in the world, they just have not been understood properly. 

We use language in a sophisticated manner without realizing that it has given us 

the symbols to work with time in complex ways.

Language, however, began with the earliest language, G1, which was spoken by Homo erectus a million years ago, and which gradually developed due to the cultural and survival needs of these people. 

I always felt that the human sense of time must have developed slowly (meaning a million or so years) but there was no evidence to support that. And so it seemed unlikely that we would ever discover an early language since it was probably spoken by prehistoric people who had left no record. In addition, it was generally assumed that language began with us, Homo sapiens, and that it might not have developed until relatively recently, such as one hundred thousand years ago. Everett's timetable, however, pushed the start of language back much further.

NOTE: While I believe language may have taken a million or so years to develop, this time table is not crucial for my hypothesis. A shorter timetable could definitely be possible. What's important is the sequence and nature of the development of language and the concepts of time as I have outlined them here.

So with Dan's hypothesis and the clear evidence of the Piraha's basic language, it now seemed to me that the history of language was quite different. A living language of the contemporary tribe, the Piraha, with a very old tradition of hunting-and-gathering showed what an earlier language could sound like. 


THE AHA MOMENT

The AHA moment came when I realized that not only had Dan Everett found an earlier language but the language and culture were entirely based in the moment and in the here and now -- in the Immediacy Of Experience Principle, as Dan called it. 

This language and culture had a very different sense of time and that understanding of time was anchored in the present -- a sense of time that was much closer to instinctual animal behavior. Since my work has been about the human experience of time and how the concept and experience of time have changed as lifestyles and technology changed, the Piraha sense of time was exactly what I had predicted if an earlier language could be found. This was especially true for people living a day-to-day hunter-gatherer existence as early humans must have done. 

And also if that was true, then a hypothetical earliest G1 language would also be based in the here and now with an even greater sense of immediacy. Until I learned about the Piraha, I could not imagine an early language. But now because of their language, it was possible to project back to the beginning and sketch out how the first stages would be put together and also what their sense of time would be like. 

------------------------- EUREKA! -------------------------

QUICK SUMMARY OF MY AHA! UNDERSTANDING: As we know, all languages reference time but the earliest languages probably had a very different concept of time than we have today. These early languages had a here-and-now immediate sense of time that then took hundreds of thousands of years to develop into the modern linear sense of time.

It turned out that the Piraha language provided the crucial intermediate point in between our early animal behavior and today's fully developed modern languages. 

So here is how my ideas fit so nicely with those of Everett.

This is a recreation of Australopithecus who is considered our distant ancestor

and who almost certainly had not developed language at this point.

Since we were animals first and humans later, there must have been a time when we humans lived like the animals, i.e., entirely in the present. In other words, past and future did not exist along with planning and coordinating. So the human sense of time must have evolved gradually from an animal state and done so in coordination with the gradual development of language. This was because language was the primary tool that could conceptualize time and then allow the sharing of plans and the manipulation of time. 

It was clear from the stone tool evidence left by Homo erectus that they understood processes which required a sense of time and that this knowledge was passed down from generation to generation. 

These sophisticated stone tools have been accurately dated back to 300,000 BCE. 

They were made by the earliest Homo sapiens. Homo erectus tools are much older.

An early sense of human time would be part animal that lived in the present and part human that conceived of time in a limited way and that coincided with Everett's language stages. And now I could make an educated guess about the concepts of time in each language stage. Early time concepts would be very different from the sense of time we experience today. 

In other words, early members of the genus Homo invented our concepts of time and then during the long development of these ideas, there were markedly different concepts of time. These depended on the needs of the culture, the environment, the technology, and the changing weather. The sense of time we have today in the industrial world is quite different from the sense of time in the Neolithic/agricultural era which in turn was quite different from the sense of time when people lived in tribes and were nomadic and/or hunters and gatherers in the forest or the jungle.

These are members of the hunter-gatherer Piraha tribe in the Amazon today who live by the Immediacy Of Experience Principle according to Daniel Everett. 

This means their concept of time is anchored in the near-present

and quite different from the modern world. 
Everett also believes they speak a G2 language 
which might be an earlier form of spoken language.

And with that my hypothesis of the human-sense-of-time now had a pedigree, meaning that human ideas about time had a clear beginning and that they then continued to develop right up to today. And it was completely intertwined with the development of language because language provided the tools for working with time.

About a month after this, I formulated "A Comprehensive Hypothesis About the Evolution of Language and the Human-Sense-Of-Time." In this paper, I outlined a basic sequence for the development of language and the development of time concepts. The AHA! moment had now turned into a full-blown hypothesis. Voila!

A Comprehensive Hypothesis About the 

Evolution of Language and the Human-Sense-Of-Time

https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2018/11/comprehensive-hypothesis-human-sense-of-time.html

After this theory about language, I went one step further and expanded these ideas to include culture, technology, and belief systems.

An Expanded Hypothesis That Relates the History of the Human-Experience-Of-Time

to Culture, Technology and Belief Systems in Addition to Language

https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2019/01/expanded-hypothesis-about-human-experience-of-time.html

The many languages of the world.

AFTERWORD

Archimedes in his bath, just before his Eureka moment.

The most famous Eureka story occurred when Archimedes of Syracuse around 250 BCE was trying to discover a way to determine whether an intricate gold crown was really solid gold as the King of Syracuse, Hieron, had ordered from a metalsmith. The king suspected that it was partly silver which was hidden behind the gold and so ordered Archimedes to determine its true composition. According to legend, Archimedes had been struggling with the problem for some time and finally gave up and took a bath. When he got into the full bath, he realized that water now overflowed due to the density of his body. Then in a flash, he understood that placing an object in water would displace the water and that the volume of displaced water would allow him to make a calculation about the density of the metal -- since silver and gold had different densities. And that was the Eureka moment. Eureka means, "I have found it" and according to legend Archimedes forgot that he was naked, jumped from his bath and ran through the streets shouting, "Eureka! Eureka!" And, BTW, it turned out that the crown was not entirely gold, so the king was justified in his suspicion.

Galileo had an AHA! moment when he saw a lamp swinging from a long cord while he was at a church service. He then measured the time of its swings with his pulse. His work led to the first formulas that included a complex understanding of time.

After frustrating months of work, Einstein either got in a trolley or imagined that he did, as he had ridden it many times. In any case, the ringing of the bell by the ancient clock (behind the trolley) in Bern Switzerland triggered a vision in which the trolley was suddenly moving at the speed of light. Einstein then realized that the time showing on the Bern clock-face could never catch up with the trolley. And this became the basis for his Special Theory of Relativity.  

MORE ABOUT MENDELEEV & THE PERIODIC TABLE


The Mendeleev insight is particularly interesting because it was not entirely correct but was close enough that it eventually led to both a precise understanding of the nature of each element and also how these elements came to exist. So the periodic table became a basic road map of all matter that makes up everything that exists.

If all the elements are arranged in the order of their atomic weights, a periodic repetition of properties is obtained. This is expressed by the law of periodicity. 

— Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev

NOTE: Mendeleev was close but not quite right. It turned out that elements needed to be arranged in order of their atomic number (the number of protons) and not their weights. But the atomic number was not well understood until almost 45 years later.

For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. 

C.P. Snow

The eighth element, starting from a given one, is a kind of repetition of the first, like the eighth note of an octave in music.

— John Alexander Newlands

Mendeleev's insight led eventually to theories about how each element was created. It turns out they were mostly created (cooked as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says next) in the centers of stars and the explosions of stars. So Mendeleev's concept reached far into the nature of mater itself.

One of the great triumphs of 20th Century astrophysics, was tracing the elements of your body, of all the elements around us, to the actions of stars—that crucible in the centers of stars that cooked basic elements into heavier elements, light elements into heavy elements. (I say “cooked”—I mean thermonuclear fusion.) The heat brings them together, gets you bigger atoms, that then do other interesting chemical things, fleshing out the contents of the Periodic Table. 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

MORE ABOUT THE IDEAS IN THIS BLOG

For people who are not familiar with this blog over the last seven years, here are some of my most important blog-posts:

== In my most popular blog-article I wrote that humans have a unique sense of time, an enhanced sense such as dogs have with smell, due to the prefrontal cortex in the brain. Dan Everett seemed to agree with this idea in his book How Language Began published more than three years after my blog article. This blog-article is my most important one and has been viewed and downloaded over 7000 times. 
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2014/08/animal-senses-compared-to-human-sense.html

== Another blog-article made the point that all languages include ways of expressing time and conceptualizing time. This blog-article would become a key part of my thinking.
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2017/02/concept-of-time-embedded-in-language.html

== I have also shown that Neolithic people had a precise pre-scientific method for measuring the yearly seasonal cycles which was key to their sense of time.
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2015/03/computing-winter-solstice-at-newgrange.html

And while I was pleased with these different pieces of research, I was looking for an overall hypothesis that would tie many of these ideas together.