All people have the sun and moon to help them think about time. But thinking about time is easier for people who lived in cold places, where winter is very different from summer, than it is for those who live in tropical places, where days and nights are all the same length. There They had to count time by the changing direction of the winds or by the seasons when it rains or when the rivers rise. The moon helps them to mark off months, and this is easier still for people who live by the seaside, where they can watch the tides come and go with the changes of the moon. From watching the sun and the moon, some people went on to watching constellations like the Dippers or stars like the Pleiades, and they could talk more accurately about the passing of time.
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| A section of a calendar history (winter count) of the Kiowa. The vertical black poles indicate winters; the pictographs above and between them illustrate outstanding events of succeeding winters and summers. |
Once people had a way of thinking about days, by calling them suns, and of thinking about nights, by calling them the time when there is no sun or the time when the stars shine, they could think about distance too. One man could ask another: "How far is it to the place where you found that strong stone out of which you made that ax?' And the other could answer: "I walked for five days toward the place where the sun rises, and I slept for five nights." In order to make this kind of answer, it was necessary already to have learned to watch the sun, to know where it rose and where it set, to think of days as the periods of time when the sun shines, and to count.
Then man could think about the little world he knew. One part was toward the rising of the sun, another toward the place where the sun set. When people did this accurately, they then had directions -east and west, north and south. Sometimes they included two more directions -the very top of the sky above (the zenith) and the very center of the earth beneath (the nadir).