Rick Doble's Theory About
The Human Understanding of Time (HUT)
AN OVERVIEW
A complete theory
From about 3 million years ago to the present day
From 10 years of this blog about the human experience of time
Lucy (Australopithecus) 3.2 mya, related to and possibly one of our early ancestors. Image compiled by Peter Schmid courtesy of Lee R. Berger, University of the Witwatersrand.
The Human Understanding of Time (HUT)
HUT is a comprehensive theory about how the human understanding of time came about and how it developed.
The reason we are the dominant species on this planet is due, in large part, to our ability to plan, organize, manage, and predict -- which all require a sophisticated understanding of time.
Homo sapiens is the only animal on the planet that conceives and works with time in a linear fashion, time with a past, present, and future plus duration. This did not happen quickly but, I believe, took millions of years, beginning with early hominins.
In past articles over the last ten years, I have gone into detail about different aspects ranging from millions of years ago, to the emerging civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and the consumer culture and photography of today. In this article I want to put the pieces together, to look at a grand view, to look at the forest, and not concentrate on the trees. In brief, I want to paint a BIG PICTURE.
The HUT theory involves many aspects:
* the addition of the pre-frontal cortex to the hominin brain, a part of the brain that allowed hominins to consider possible future actions and eventually to conceive of linear time with a past, present, and future
* the development of the brain with the increased ability to remember and to imagine
* the early and continuing development of plant and fiber technology, a technology that all agree must have existed but until now has been ignored due to a lack of direct evidence; new indirect and some direct evidence points to woven-fiber technology (basket making) as an important early technology
* the survival benefits of woven-fiber technology (basket making) which allowed hominins to gather and carry much more food and materials
* the possible influence of woven-fiber technology on evolution itself due to increased food supplies and better access to important materials
* concepts of time related to basket making which took planning and then time-consuming work to make
* the development of culture based on concepts of time
* the development of languages all of which include time references
* the development of time concepts such as: coordination, management, planning, design, imagination, memory, prediction, and the use and development of processes
ABOUT DOCUMENTATION
Since this article is an overview I will not provide a list of sources for my statements, but if you look at my timeline article (next link) and the specific articles referenced, you will find extensive documentation.
Please see my previous article,
A Historic Timeline About Human Concepts of Time,
for documentation about statements made in this article.
EARLIER INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS
A major reason that this type of theory did not exist until now is because many assumptions were incorrect. In particular, the old assumed timeline of human development that existed for about 150 years had many flaws, flaws in part due to an inability to properly date archaeological finds. Now, however, this has been largely solved due to advanced dating techniques. So, for example, modern dating was able to confirm that the ceiling cave paintings at the Cave of Altamira in Spain were about 14,000 years old and not fraudulent as originally claimed by experts.
But the timeline was also incorrect because of many unfounded assumptions.
To perhaps over-generalize, in the past, it was assumed that early hominins were not very intelligent or sophisticated. It was only with the much later rise of civilization that humans finally emerged from primitive and brutish conditions. The entire prehistoric past (meaning before written records) and stone age technology, including advanced Neolithic technology, was seen as crude and unrefined at best.
The thinking now is almost the opposite. It is my opinion, and that of many others, that even the earliest hominins with small brains such as Homo habilis or Homo erectus accomplished remarkable things and that they were very smart with the brain power they did have. For example, they invented technologies that had never existed before, such as the making of stone tools, which they continued to develop and refine.
But even when considering more recent time periods such as the Neolithic era, the bias of modern thinking is evident. For example, using written history as a key dividing point in human history is and was a mistake. Before written history, i.e., in prehistoric times, extremely sophisticated cultures and societies were established. They were so sophisticated that some of the Neolithic processes, for example, are still used today or until recently.
The Neolithic time period is a good example of how modern thinking stood as a barrier to a clear understanding of Neolithic accomplishments. It was assumed that since it used stone age technology, it was primitive. Not so. In fact, well-designed stone age tools, which were extremely efficient, were used for thousands of years even after the rise of the great civilizations and the invention of bronze, because bronze was rare and expensive.
This axe looks crude but it was state of the art for thousands of years. It not only could quickly clear a forested site, it and similar stone tools could cut and shape wood better than any tools before it. It led to a new 'wood' technology that had not been possible before in Europe.
"A Neolithic stone axe with a wooden handle. Found at Ehenside Tarn, now in the British Museum."
Incorrect assumptions are a barrier to new discoveries. They prevent research into ideas that disagree with these assumptions, prevent students from exploring new areas, and choke off funding.
I say all of this because many incorrect assumptions need to be put to rest so that the new insights of a comprehensive theory such as HUT can be considered.
I will summarize past incorrect assumptions as follows:
ASSUMPTION: It was assumed that basketry was developed during the Neolithic era and not before. It was also assumed that the hunter-gatherers of the Upper Paleolithic did not have the time to make baskets or woven-fiber items nor the sophisticated intelligence and skills to make them.
FACT: Recent studies showed that hunter-gatherers had more time than horticultural farmers. And Native American Indian mobile hunter-gathers (a lifestyle viewed as similar to those in the European Upper Paleolithic) were expert basket makers who preferred light durable fiber containers over heavy and breakable pottery.
ASSUMPTION: If a culture does not use an advanced technology that is available to it, it is primitive.
FACT: Humans use a technology because they need it. For example, the assumption that Native American Indians who did not use pottery but preferred basketry were less sophisticated was incorrect. Mobile hunter-gatherers needed light strong items as they moved. While not well known, they had developed large and small baskets for carrying water and baskets for cooking with hot rocks. Plus they could make just about any additional woven-fiber item from local vegetation as they moved around.
ASSUMPTION: Technological advances happen in a fairly predictable progression.
FACT: Many things that were assumed to be part of the Neolithic have been found in the Paleolithic such as a highly sophisticated ceramic figurine. It can no longer be assumed that technology progressed in an orderly fashion.
It was always assumed that ceramics began in the Neolithic era along with pottery as it required a hot and controlled fire. But this figurine was made about 20,000 years earlier in the Upper Paleolithic era.
Venus of Dolnà Vestonice
"Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE [or early Upper Paleolithic]. This figurine...is among the oldest known ceramic articles in the world."
ASSUMPTION: Basket making was women's work and therefore not important.
FACT: Yes, in many cases baskets were made by women, which should have nothing to do with the value of their work. The Native American Indians revered the highly sophisticated processes and creations of their women.
ASSUMPTION: It was assumed that basketry was, in any case, not important and certainly not as important as stone tools.
FACT: Basket making and woven-fiber technology (which includes rope) were critical. The tools made with these technologies could be made anywhere in the world with local materials and used for a wide variety of items from boats to large burden baskets for gathering food or firewood. This technology was also used to make hats, shoes, and even suspension rope bridges. These were versatile tools even though they have not been thought of as tools by researchers until recently.
ASSUMPTION: The birth of civilization, meaning Mesopotamia and Egypt, marks the start of man's highest achievements.
FACT: Most of the processes and technologies that made the great civilizations possible had been highly developed in the Neolithic time period. For example, The Bronze Age, seen as a clear break from the 'primitive' stone age, depended on Neolithic inventions. Neolithic pottery kilns were able to achieve high temperatures which had not been possible before. And this ability led directly to the even higher temperatures necessary for metallurgy. They also built a variety of small and large reed boats which became important for trade. Furthermore, the Neolithic radical change in lifestyle from the previous hunter-gatherer existence depended on agriculture, a selection of basic crops (founder crops), a method for storing and preserving the crops over months or years, sedentary villages, textiles, and pottery. All of the above formed the foundation for the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
ASSUMPTION: Writing is the dividing technology that separates advanced societies from earlier crude cultures.
FACT: Neolithic societies did not require writing as the Neolithic cities were not big enough to need it. However, the much larger later civilizations did need it.
ASSUMPTION: The scientific achievements of civilizations show a clear superiority over Neolithic and earlier cultures.
FACT: Some Neolithic science was as advanced or even more advanced than those of later civilizations. For example, the passageway at Newgrange, which was aligned with the winter solstice sun and used to determine the day of the solstice, was more precise than methods used by the Romans or the Greeks.
Newgrange
LEFT: Close-up of the gate to the passageway (bottom) and the roof-box (top).
RIGHT: Close-up of the roof-box and the funnel stones. The solstice light comes through this specially designed roof-box and then into the passageway. The light does not come through the passageway doorway.
"For 17 minutes, therefore, at sunrise on the shortest day of the year, direct sunlight can enter Newgrange, not through the doorway, but through the specially contrived slit that lies under the roof-box at the outer end of the passage roof."
(O'Kelly et al., Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend.)
While this looks crude to our modern eyes, the alignment and placement of the stones were exact and could determine the day of the solstice in real time, which was (and still is) very hard to determine through direct observation.
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).
While we have no written records, the many Neolithic monuments that are astronomically aligned indicate the ability of Neolithic science to mark and measure time and also the importance of time.
Writing about Neolithic monuments and megaliths, Michael Gantley of National Geographic wrote,
"The incorporation of astronomical alignments suggests that Neolithic ceremonies were closely bound with the changing seasons. These cycles were critical to agrarian communities..."
(Gantley, Europe’s Mighty Megaliths "Rock" the Winter Solstice)
_______________________________
A NEW STORY OF
HUMAN, CULTURAL, & TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
Once these incorrect assumptions are pushed aside, a new story of human, technological, and cultural evolution becomes possible.
In particular, the human understanding of time is critical. It took a long time to develop and once developed it went through many versions. Yet this idea has not taken center stage until now. Without an understanding of time, none of the great achievements of humankind would have been possible.
Why a study of the human understanding of time has not been explored is a mystery. I believe it was again due to another incorrect assumption: many believe that time is what it is and our perception of it has always been the same. Before I started writing my blog, I could only find a few discussions of different possible conceptions of time as humankind developed.
THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX (PFC)
Millions of years ago (no one is sure when) some primates acquired a unique part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex which, among many other things, allowed some creatures to consider different future outcomes and then choose which action to take. It is very likely that over time, and with increased memory and imagination due to a much larger brain, hominins were able to conceive of time in a linear fashion, with a past, present, and future, but this did not happen quickly. It took millions of years.
Early developing technologies such as basket making and the demands of woven-fiber technology may have affected how this part of the brain evolved. While other primate brains have the prefrontal cortex, the one that Homo sapiens have is much larger and unique to our species. Studies of the PFC are ongoing as modern science is still learning about this part of the brain.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SENSE OF TIME
IN THE PALEOLITHIC ERA
"It must have required enormous effort for man to overcome his natural tendency to live like the animals in a continual present."
"Man must have been conscious of memories and purposes long before he made any explicit distinction between past, present, and future."
Whitrow, Gerald. Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. 1988, pages 21-22.
As members of the animal kingdom, I believe hominins emerged from a sense of time that was immediate to a very different sense of time that could be imagined and worked with.
To begin my search for evidence, I focused on basketry because I felt that basket making and woven-fiber items were closely related to concepts of time and would have been familiar to everyone in a tribe. I also knew that containers and weaving were found in all cultures around the world, so there was a good chance that basketry was an ancient technology.
A basket must be imagined first and then created in a grid pattern which takes time and also represents time. So a basket becomes, in a way, a symbol for time itself.
In my work, I pushed back the beginning of woven-fiber technology and basket making to about 2 million years ago when it can be proved with fossil evidence that early hominins lived in close association with weaverbirds who made sophisticated basket-like nests. Oldowan tools from early hominins were found in the same layers as skeletons of weaverbirds at Olduvai Gorge in Africa. So it is likely that early humans learned a type of basket making from these birds. For example, random weave baskets made from flexible green vines are easy to make and can be quite strong once the vines have dried out.
LEFT: Weaverbird nests are well-designed and strong. Abandoned ones fell down from Baobab tree limbs (trees where hominins often camped) which early hominins could have collected. "Weaverbird (Southern Masked Weaver) nest of dry grass, near Pretoria, South Africa"
RIGHT: A random weave basket made from vines by Nan Bowles. It was constructed with green flexible vines that later dried to make a light, stiff, strong basket. (Basket/Photo by Nan Bowles)
I was then able to show indirectly that baskets and woven-fiber items probably continued to be developed by Homo erectus about 300,000 years ago with a much more advanced right-angle design.
I believe that after more than a million years, random weave technology began to develop into a technology that used a regular design and right angle or opposing strand construction. This was a crucial breakthrough. This technology allowed the creation of an endless number of woven-fiber items plus it was scalable, meaning that large products were possible such as reed boats. It was with this basic model that shoes, hats, containers, huts, and boats in a wide variety of configurations could be constructed.
At some point, probably hundreds of thousands of years ago, a system of vertical spokes and horizontal weaver strands (or a system of opposing strands) developed. Eventually, this system was capable of creating a wide variety of durable items from sandals to large houses using local materials. Some such baskets lasted generations and were passed down in a family.
LEFT: The vertical spokes can be plainly seen as this young girl begins to make a basket. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Country_School-_Everyday_Life_at_Baldock_County_Council_School,_Baldock,_Hertfordshire,_England,_UK,_1944_D20551.jpg
RIGHT: The stiff vertical spokes and the right-angled horizontal flexible weaver strands are clearly visible in this basket that has almost been completed.
This idea was based on the discovery of an A-frame-like building at Terra Amata in France constructed by Homo erectus, which included many of the elements required for right-angle basketry and woven-fiber technology, such as the use of even regular opposing poles.
A museum recreation of a building (Terra Amata, Nice, France) probably made by Homo erectus and is considered the oldest known human building.
Then I was able to find new direct evidence. Microscopic evidence of basic cordage (rope) made by Neanderthals was discovered dating to the Middle Paleolithic. And impressions in clay of sophisticated basket and textile weaving were dated to the Upper Paleolithic. Plus Native American Indian hunter-gathers (a lifestyle viewed as similar to those in the European Upper Paleolithic) were shown to be expert basket makers.
These last discoveries of direct evidence revealed technologies that were already highly developed. Therefore experts believe that the early stages of these must have begun much sooner.
TOP: This realistic painting of a bison is about 14,000 years old and was painted by a Paleolithic 'caveman' in the Cave of Altamira in Spain. This work was done from memory with a multi-colored spray-paint technique in the darkness of the cave. This demonstrates the remarkable skills, powers of observation, and memory humans had in Paleolithic times.(NOTE: This photo was taken of an accurate reproduction of this bison painted on the ceiling at Altamira as visitors are no longer allowed in the cave.)
BOTTOM: A photograph of a European bison today (a somewhat different bison species), shows the accuracy of the cave painting on the top.
PROCESSES
It seems clear that early on a sense of time began to develop since it can be shown that processes were invented to make stone tools and that these processes continued to be developed and refined over millions of years.
Definition: Process (Oxford Language):
A series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.
Technology involves processes that require steps that must be done in a certain chronological order and require a duration of time to achieve a specific future result. Processes involve the past, present, and future plus duration -- the essential elements of linear time.
Moreover, processes almost inevitably become more complicated. For example, with "the major [stone tool] industries [that] include (in chronological order) the Oldowan, Acheulean, Mousterian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian industries" (Britannica) each stone age industry was more complex than the one before it. For example, 18 different types of stone implements have been discovered from the Acheulean industry (starting with Homo erectus 1.75 mya) such as chisels, awls and anvils but by the late Upper Paleolithic (ending about 10 kya) the tool kit was up to 80 different implements. (Britannica)
As the complexity increased, so did an understanding of time because more planning and preparation were involved, more stone shaping was required, teaching the young these skills took time, and imagining the final result from the initial raw stone required a linear sense of progression. In addition processes such as making baskets required a sense of math, geometry, and a concept of the basket to be made. Teaching this did not initially require language as it could be learned by imitation. In one study I referenced, a woman was shown how to make baskets by imitation without a word being spoken. A native girl in a contemporary tribe sat next to her and led her through the steps involved.
LEFT: Paleolithic 'flake tools'.
RICHT: Neolithic polished tools.
Page 280, Volume 15 of the German illustrated encyclopedia Meyers Konversationslexikon, 4th edition (1885-1890).
So I believe a complex unspoken sense of time did develop before language began.
SURVIVAL AND EVOLUTION
Basketry and other woven-fiber items would have allowed hominins to gather more food and materials. For example, big "backpack" type baskets known as "burden baskets" would have allowed hominins to gather large quantities of goods from distant locations. This would have increased their chances of survival. And this ability to provide more food would have affected their evolution.
Known as burden baskets, these baskets were used worldwide in just about every society even today, and were widely used by hunter-gatherer Native American Indians on a daily basis, and probably during the Neolithic time period for harvesting crops.
LEFT: Carrying Basket, Paiute Indians, Utah.
(Aboriginal American Basketry, 1904, Fig. 185, p. 494)
RIGHT: "Apache Indian woman carrying a "Kathak" on her back, Arizona, ca.1880."
(University of Southern California, ca.1880, Apache Indian woman carrying a "Kathak")
LANGUAGE
For words are to thought
what tools are to work;
the product depends largely on the growth of the tools.
what tools are to work;
the product depends largely on the growth of the tools.
Will Durant, History of Civilization: Volume 1, Chapter 5, The Mental Elements of Civilization.
Time reference is a universal property of language...
Jacqueline Lecarme, Ph.D., Linguistics
No one knows exactly when, but possibly at some point in the Middle Paleolithic or early Upper Paleolithic era, an initial full language began to emerge although there may have been a rudimentary proto-language long before that. I believe that language then became the main tool for working with time.
With early languages, it is my contention that the sense of time was immediate. Time was understood in terms of a couple of days, no more. There is evidence for this with the hunter-gatherer Piraha tribe in the Amazon who think this way but also have an extremely complex language that expresses their time concepts.
A Piraha community. The Pirahas are hunter-gatherers who live in the Amazon.
NEOLITHIC LINEAR TIME WITHIN CYCLICAL TIME
Eventually in the Neolithic era there began to be an understanding of long-term linear time. This sense of time made it possible to plan, harvest and store crops over a year's time. But again it is my contention, that the Neolithic people conceived of time as primarily cyclical year to year, season to season, and day to day but within that cycle linear time could exist.
When the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt emerged they used a range of woven-fiber items that employed technology passed down from Neolithic societies who had continued to develop and expand the woven-fiber technology.
This woven bowl is an example of the fine workmanship
that had been achieved in the Neolithic era.
that had been achieved in the Neolithic era.
LEFT: Bowl
RIGHT: Detail of bowl
Baskets, basket bowls, sandals, textiles, and mats from
the Neolithic Era (5200-4600 BCE or 7200-6600 BP)
were found in Los Murcielagos Cave, Albunol, Province Of Granada, Andalusia, Spain.
the Neolithic Era (5200-4600 BCE or 7200-6600 BP)
were found in Los Murcielagos Cave, Albunol, Province Of Granada, Andalusia, Spain.
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Sophisticated reed housing began in the Neolithic as well.
"A mudhif, a traditional Marsh Arab guesthouse made entirely out of reeds. The Marsh Arabs live a lifestyle that dates back 5,000 years." Quoted from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iraqi_mudhif_interior.jpg
Mudhif Reception Hall
Known as mudhifs, these buildings were (and still are) made entirely from reeds. Buildings can be quite large and are used for ceremonial purposes. Small ones, called rabas, are used as family homes. Weaving technology once mastered can be scaled up to make quite large structures such as these traditional mudhif reed buildings that have been made for thousands of years by the Mudan people in the marshes of southern Iraq.
LEFT: Local contractors begin the job of building a mudhif. "The reeds are gathered from marshlands near the Euphrates River."
MIDDLE: "Local contractors construct the main reed arches of a marsh Arab mudhif."
RIGHT: Almost completed, the mudhif exterior.
It is very likely that many if not most houses in Mesopotamian cities, at least in the beginning, were these mudhif/raba-type grass huts since high-quality reeds grew wild in the marshes. These were quite nice comfortable homes. Homes made out of bricks came later and were expensive, so their use may have been limited.
ANCIENT CULTURES
Basketry was a key element of Mesopotamian societies and a central part of their mythology, so much so that in one myth an important god declared, "The pickax and the basket build cities." Baskets sealed with bitumen were used to hold water to irrigate the fields and other baskets were used to manage and dredge the canals. There were over 100 words altogether in Mesopotamia that dealt with basket weaving, baskets, woven mats, reed craftsmanship, reed constructions, and weaving with palm leaves.
Cuneiform shipping receipts in Mesopotamia show that there was a key reed industry since high-quality reeds grew naturally in the marshes. Writing had also begun. Scribes wrote with reed styluses to record sales on clay tablets which were then filed in reed baskets. Reeds were used to build large and small boats and a variety of containers. So woven-fiber technology which had been developing for perhaps several million years was a critical part of early civilizations.
This reed ship in Mesopotamia illustrates the sophistication of the reed industry. This painting depicts a large ship made of reeds in early Mesopotamia. The existence of similar large reed boats has been well documented. <LINK>
Both Egypt and the Mesopotamian cities adopted the Neolithic sense of linear time within cyclical time. And it was this sense of time, which was so different from hunter-gathers just ten or twenty thousand years earlier, that gave them the power to manage their societies based on extensive agriculture.
While often overlooked, both the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians depended on huge numbers of woven-fiber sacks for holding and transporting grain
along with baskets carried by pack animals.
along with baskets carried by pack animals.
LEFT: Picture from the Sumerian Standard of Ur.
of a person carrying a sack, circa 2600 BCE.
RIGHT: Picture of an Egyptian carrying a sack
from Tombe d'Oumsou, circa 1450 BCE.
The oldest Egyptian mathematical document, known as "The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus" which is dated to the 13th dynasty (approx. 1800 BCE), contains a geometry problem (Problem 10) relating to basketry, which shows the importance of basket making to this early civilization.
This picture is of Problem 14 in the Moscow Papyrus
Egyptian paintings show a wide range of baskets that were used in agriculture along with sacks to carry and store grain. In addition, woven papyrus boats and sandals were common.
Baskets were critical tools for Egyptian agriculture.
BOTTOM:
While astronomy is the study of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, it is also a study of time. At night, for example, the sky moves every second and starts at a different point from night to night. Over a year the star patterns repeat and indicate a precise way of determining the time of year.
"Map of the night sky: star positions
from the Bright Stars Catalog, 5th Edition. Rasterized." 2006.
This modern map of the stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere
is based on the Babylonian model. The white curved line is the zodiac.
Notice the faint horizontal and vertical grid lines and the 360-degree indicators.
The later Babylonian culture (Neo-Babylonian) conceived of the sky as a circle and then divided the sky into 12 sections, 30 degrees apart making a yearly total of 360 degrees (still used today for degrees in a circle) that repeated yearly. Each 30-degree section was a constellation in the Zodiac which was a concept they invented. They also mapped out the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets all followed. Each degree was subdivided into 60 arcminutes and each minute into 60 arcseconds (the same numbers we use today). Finally, the sky in a circle was divided into a grid pattern of declination and right-ascension which can be thought of today as latitude and longitude on Earth projected into the sky. And with these two coordinates, any star or planet could be pinpointed. The Babylonian map of the sky with this grid right-angle pattern looked very much like an upside-down basket. While I cannot yet confirm that this grid pattern was derived from basketry, it is an intriguing idea that should be researched.
CLASSICAL, MEDIEVAL, & MODERN TIME
It was assumed until about 400 years ago that the sun went around the Earth. Around 150 CE, Claudius Ptolemy devised an accurate system that was only off by one day every hundred years based on this assumption. His system required epicycles or circles within circles. For about 1500 years his science was the accepted astronomy. His system also included a grid and coordinates for star and planet positions, which he adopted from the Babylonians.
"A simple illustration showing the basic elements of Ptolemaic astronomy.
It shows a planet rotating on an epicycle which is itself rotating around
a deferent inside a crystalline sphere." Quoted from:
While the geocentric system of Ptolemy is no longer believed and has been replaced with the heliocentric system (the Earth revolves around the sun), his accurate system of wheels within wheels (epicycles) created a sophisticated way of gearing which led directly to the Industrial Revolution and machines.
Gears based on Ptolemy's epicycles in a pocket watch.
"The Prague astronomical clock [above] was installed in 1410...and is the oldest functioning Astronomical clock in the world." Photo and quote from:
Medieval clocks were built using the epicycle gearing of Ptolemy's geocentric astronomy. Ptolemy's astronomy and geography also used a vertical and horizontal 'grid' system probably inherited from the Babylonians. Ptolemy's gearing geometry would lead directly to the construction of machines and the Industrial Revolution.
CONTEMPORARY TIME
Clocks were the "key machine of the modern industrial age."
Strandh, Sigvard, A History of the Machine.
In a sense, all machines are clocks. A geared clock is simply a machine whose product is the movement of clock hands on a clock face. A car motor is a machine that produces speed. Both have to proceed in a specific orderly manner to function properly. A misfiring car engine is a good example of a timing problem because the engine is firing when the pistons are not in the right position.
Today virtually all computers have a clock at their center that handles data according to its clock speed. For example, a CPU with 3700 megahertz clock speed (MHz) handles three billion seven hundred million cycles per second. So the clock continues to be at the heart of our technology.
For thousands of years time continued to be thought of as cyclical but eventually with the Scientific Revolution around 1700 and the work of Isaac Newton, cosmological time was seen as linear.
In the modern world, we think of time as primarily linear although our days and weeks, and seasons are cyclical. Time is seen as a commodity so we spend and save time. We are constantly aware of time because clocks and schedules are ever-present. We are to some extent imprisoned by time as we can rarely step outside the grid.
It is clear from my research that much of what we think of as time has been molded by the culture. Time is not something that can be seen or felt in the physical world. Much of it exists in our collective imagination that we have been conditioned to accept. This is as true today as it was for Homo sapiens in the Paleolithic. Today, for example, Aboriginal Australians have a very different concept of time and have expressed great difficulty when dealing with Western linear time.
See my article about time being the most important subject
in schools in industrialized societies.
in schools in industrialized societies.
School's Most Important Subject: Time
FUTURE TIME
But thinking about time does not stop with a study of history. Understanding time today is just as important.
Global warming will require a response that takes into account the speed of sea level rise, for example, and how quickly to respond to it. But the effects of the Industrial Revolution (which came about partly due to the Scientific Revolution) are not just limited to global warming. These effects will require an understanding of their possible damage and also may require a timely response. For example, 380 million tons of plastic are entering the oceans every year.
CATHEDRAL THINKING
Perhaps the most important contribution of the Middle Ages to our current age is the concept of Cathedral Thinking. This concept has now become relevant as we face the consequences of industrial development which may lead to climate change and yet may not be felt for a hundred years.
Cathedral thinking is about the work and the time required to build a great cathedral. In the past, many of the workers never saw their work completed and did not expect to. Nevertheless, they were committed to the grand vision of building a magnificent cathedral which became a source of pride to the local community and provided an experience of reverence for the faithful. The work of the builders was seen as an expression of devotion to their spiritual beliefs.
An example is the York Minster Cathedral in England which was built from 1220 to 1472 or over more than 250 years. While other cathedrals did not take this long to build, a hundred years or so for their construction was not unusual.
CONCLUSION
So my Theory About The Human Understanding of Time (HUT) attempts to explain how humans developed a sense and concept of linear time from its earliest beginnings right up to today. Since time is so important, a deeper understanding should help us as a species.
Today, in our digital age, even clocks depict time as linear,
with numbers always going forward rather than the implied repeating cycle
of earlier round circular clocks.
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