Celebrating Sacred Time
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Here is the equivalent of a computer from possibly 25,000 years ago! This is the Ishango bone - the fibula of a baboon from north eastern Zaire, discovered in 1960 on the shore of Lake Edward. The incisions have had various explanations - from making the bone easier to hold, to a record of prime numbers, but scholars have concluded from examining the bone microscopically, that they represent a six-month calendar.
And this is another carved bone, this time from France, say approximately 11,000 BCE. Now the carving is becoming more sophisticated. Even so long ago people felt the need to harness the surrounding forces of nature and it has been the regular cycles of these forces of nature, observed in the passing of days, months and years, which have been used to measure time and which through the ages have given rise to the various calendars which mark the passing of time in the lives of each one of us. In the early days of humanity, it was the seasons, within the yearly cycle which determined the needs of the tribe and controlled the supply of natural food - food was plentiful in the summer and autumn, but there was no food at all to be had in the winter.
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These early calendars seem to have been based on observation of the phases of the moon. The waxing and waning of the moon, as seen here, produced an easily visible unit of time: the four week lunar month. However, the basic unit of time is the day - based on the rising and setting of the sun. So the solar day, together with the lunar month and year have been from earliest times the reference points in the practicalities of everyday life. In the ancient world, time and religion were inseparably connected; time was seen as a religious phenomenon, and all time was considered sacred in that it was a gift from the gods and provided access to the divine ...
 
... and significant moments during the day, the month and the year were auspicious, or not, for coming into contact with local deities. The seasons of the year, the phases of the moon, the times of the day, were celebrated with religious rituals and sacrifices. Verses in the psalms from ancient Israel bear this out:  'You made the moon to mark the months; the sun knows the time for its setting ... Sound the trumpet at the new moon, when the moon is full on our feast ... '
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