While we stand on shaky, though tantalizing, ground in the attempt to dredge up material proof of ancient timekeeping systems in the carved bones and standing stones of archaic Western Europe, there is no doubt that a decisive primary step in the development of our calendar was taken in Sumeria in the fourth millennium b c: that is, the token system which served as the precursor to the cuneiform writing upon which was founded the Babylonian calendar and numerical system. The transformations in this system, which took root in a sedentary, agricultural, and increasingly urbanized environment, are dramatic, well-documented, and thoroughly fascinating (see figure 2.8).
Economics and trade led to the invention of miniature clay forms fashioned into various geometrical shapes such as ovals, cones, pyramids, and triangles, which were used to keep track of different commodities, like oil and grain. Middle East archaeologists have discovered hordes of tokens of increasing complexity that seem to coincide with advancements in farming techniques accompanied by an increased variety of crops and enhanced productivity. According to Denise Schmandt-Besserat, the tokens seem to have functioned as mnemonic devices enabling the village bureaucracy to plan, store, and trade their seasonal yields.*® They were found in stores of goods— foods, textiles, and other manufactured items in urban workshops—as well as in temples, where they are believed to have played a role in the earliest known system of taxation. In later times, accountants and merchants developed the habit of depositing these tokens in clay envelopes embossed with symbols. These symbols consisted of relatively few shapes but bore a clear relation to the shapes of the tokens inside. In fact, the same pointed stylus used to mark some of the more complex tokens was also used to fashion the roundish and wedge-shaped markings adorning the envelopes. Essentially the incised markings on each envelope told what was inside; the marked envelope literally gave away its contents. Eventually a more efficient and more abstract system of notation was developed, in which a flat clay tablet with wedge-shaped markings impressed upon it replaced the more cumbersome filled clay envelope. Special symbols were introduced for numbers in a hierarchical notation system so that, for example, twenty-two measures of grain could be specified by that number preceded by the symbol for a measure of grain.
This brilliant invention of an early system of writing and numeration did not occur in a flash; the archaeological record tells us that the cuneiform tablet was not conceived as a revolutionary device and adopted immediately by all people. Rather its ultimate success was achieved only gradually. Unmistakably, we owe a share of our tendency to keep efficient records of all quantities, including time, to this reliable and concise form of communication. Later the Greeks adopted their arithmetical and calendrical principles from the cultures of the Middle East, and the Romans, from whom we acquired today's calendar, borrowed in turn from the Greeks.
In this chapter, I have aimed to penetrate the fog of the distant past when our predecessors began overtly to celebrate the rhythms that beat within and about them—to remember those rhythms, to use them, to memorize them, to sing them, to record them, to carve them in stone. We feel we have a pretty fair grasp about what took place in time marking in ancient Sumeria and in the ancient Greek oral tradition. When we step back into the world of Stonehenge or grasp a mesolithic bone, we feel a little less certain about how to interpret what we see. Above all, our interpretations will always be colored by our present beliefs and motives—the most imminent danger when we try to reconstruct our temporal past.
Still, no matter how people choose to reckon time—whether our time or theirs—the method always reflects the basic periodicities induced upon us by the natural world. Rare is the element in any of the calendars I discuss that does not grow out of the repeatable phenomena of nature's cycles, both physical and biological.
World History
