Father Sky

In an earlier post I suggested the night sky was key to early man’s ability to survive. Utilizing clues from nature, including sky phenomena, humans could anticipate the migration of herds, the planting of seeds, when to begin the trek for safer habitation with the coming of winter and any number of other activities that helped us survive from season to season. This anticipation meant they had to know what was to come; that they had a calendar of sorts. Somehow, early man realized that the most precise calendar came from the sun and stars. Water temperatures could affect the timing of salmon runs, weather changes could affect the timing of deer migrations, but every year the sun followed exactly the same path and the seasons followed suit. A common method to track the sun can be imagined in the photo below, (photographer: Soylentgreen23):

How this would be done would be for the village priest or other designated official to track the position of the morning sunrise against horizon markers which could be various small peaks as seen in the above photo. The sun’s sunrise position migrates north each day as we head toward the summer solstice and south as we head toward the winter solstice. The solstice positions would be when the sun “stands still” for a few days and then, slowly begins heading in the other direction. With just a few years experience of timing the seasons with those horizon markers you have a pretty reliable calendar… “when the sun rises behind the sharp pointed peak, we will have no more morning frost and though it is still cool, it is time to plant our seeds.” (or something like that).