The Mystery of Time

 As I was waking up this morning, I started wondering about time. We have an elaborate system of time-keeping these days, but imagine what it was like back at the beginning of human history. We humans were living in what we might now call "the wild", among lots of other living things. We would get up in the morning from wherever our bed happened to be, find food, socialize maybe, work on the shelter we called home. In the warm parts of the year, we'd probably have an easier time. When the temperatures began to drop, we might have begun to think of storing food for the winter, improving our home to keep out the cold. As the days grew shorter, we probably spent more time huddled up together or sitting around a fire. Our time calculations were very basic, and all attuned to the sun, moon and weather. 

Now, of course, when we think of time we look at our watches, or our calendars. What a huge leap! And I was curious about how that happened. So I've been researching time a bit. It was back in the Paleolithic age over 6000 years ago when people started making lunar calendars. I can imagine one drawn on a cave rock face. That would mean that there were more like 13 months in a year. These lunar calendars were recording a year's time. Recording the sequence of time during a day came much later when people invented the sundial, a round surface with marks around the outside and an upright spike to record the sun's shadow. There were water clocks too, gauging the passing of time by controlled running of water. One of these was found in the tomb of Amenhotep the 1st! And the hourglass, still used today, was a similar invention using the flow of sand through a small hole. These were found on ships as well as at home. The burning of incense sticks and candles kept the time in temples and churches for centuries. And then around the 11th century, the Chinese invented the first mechanical clock. Interestingly, the word "clock" seems to have evolved through several languages from a word that meant "bell". Long ago (and maybe even in the present) bells were used to sound the time in abbeys and at sea.

So what is time? There are many definitions, and they can get so abstract that they make your head swim. The simplest one refers to a sequence of existence or events from the past to the future. But defining time is elusive. We have all experienced time seeming to flow rapidly, and also while we're waiting for something to be over, to flow exceptionally slowly. In our present scientific world, we've made instruments which measure the passing of seconds exactly. Our inclination is to make time very predictable and stable. Yet there are other opinions about time. Some think that we create the idea of time in our brains, but that time is a fluid thing and can't be corralled into one definition. 

Our current idea of time is linear, growing out of Islamic and Judeo-Christian thinking. Yet many ancient cultures such as the Inca, the Maya and Hopi, thought of time as cylindrical. They had a concept of the wheel of time, with repeating ages that happened to everything in the world. I like that image. Somehow it gives time more meaning, rather than an antiseptic passing of minutes. In Greek mythology, Chronos was the personification of Time. He was pictured as an old wise man with a long white beard.

What an interesting journey this has been for me, exploring our different progressive beliefs about time. And now I sit under my ticking clock, typing on an incredible invention that takes me forward and back through time as long as I search for the right avenues. I have spent too long on this project, since I am already late for one of those timely appointments. But it has been a refreshing trip and I wish you a pleasant next minute or hour or day or month or year, or however time flows in your world.