Sure, but another point we’ve been discussing up thread is that for an agrarian society, descriptions such as “in the early summer, when such-and-such was happening in nature” are more precise than modern people might be inclined to think. Different plants have different times when they begin to blossom, for instance. If you keep your eyes open for such things and have experience from previous years, then you can use them estimate the date fairly accurately, within a week or two.
True.
And it’s also a mistake to assume that because a modern hunter-gatherer culture does or recently did something, therefore their and/or our remote ancestors must have done the same thing. All human cultures have been developing for the same length of time. We can get some possible clues and make some guesses as to what’s possible or likely for a hunter-gatherer culture in a particular sort of ecosystem; but we need to remember that we don’t know for sure.
In some areas, within some stretches of time, those dates are fairly stable. In other areas, and/or within other stretches of time, they vary a lot more than a week or two.
But a more relevant point is whether people actually thought this mattered, in more than a very general sense. It’s useful to know whether somebody’s a little kid, in puberty, a full adult, getting old; but may well not have a matter of interest beyond that.
And this is exactly where the OP’s sweeping reference to “ancient” people, with no specification of the period we’re interested in, causes confusion. It’s easy to find examples from historic (i.e., having produced written records) antiquity (commonly thought to be the time up to the end of the West Roman Empire) where birthdates of identifiable individuals are available. But what about prehistory, i.e. the time before writing was invented? By definition, we can’t have written records from that time, so we don’t know if people noted people’s birth dates. I, personally, think that the demonstrated interest in calendar matters among many prehistoric societies makes it likely that there was awareness of the period recurrence of the anniversary of a person’s birth. But I don’t have written records as examples to point at, so the discussion becomes kind of moot.
Another point to remember is that actual hunter-gatherer societies in the last centuries (millennia?) are typically those that were forced out of the more food-rich agricultural areas by the development of agriculture. What cultures did when there was a richer availability of food (hence leisure) was likely very different. Most of what we think of as “less advanced” cultures are in fact agricultural or pastoral to some degree.
And… with agriculture comes a need to observe and follow the progression of the solar year.
Do you work in a hardware store?
That doesn’t start with agriculture.
Hunter-gatherers also need an awareness of time to know when various plant foods were ready to eat, or when various animals were migrating.
A need to be aware of time probably goes way, way back, but the details that needed to be tracked no doubt differ not only with time but also location.
I suspect the concept of anniversaries wasn’t developed until much later than the calendar. The calendar made it possible to predict cyclical events like the seasons or the movement of heavenly bodies. But it predicted nothing in the linear world of human lifespans and remarkable events. In a privative society, putting a date to things that are not cyclical has very little utility.
I’ve heard a theory that the first calendars may have required women’s periods (which are pretty close to lunar cycles in many cases, though in ancient times women might not have been as regular for several reasons) or possibly length of pregnancies although knowing when to start counting might have been problematic.
Just a theory - well, more of a hypothesis - but it’s food for thought.
I recall too an article on cervical cancer and uterine cancer - the doctors involved did a study of a particular group in Africa where the women had gone into separate housing while menstruating. Record there showed that between pregnancies, breastfeeding, and lack of menstruation due to low body fat, they said modern western women with good nutrition probably experience about twice as many periods; (plus they have better nutrition, suggesting earlier onset of puberty and later menopause) they suggest the stress of periods can cause cancer.
If what they say is the case, periods may be nowhere near as reliable as the moon, which is also easily checked every night.
I agree with Elmer. The concept of marking a particular one-time event against a recurring calendar is probably a much later development than marking recurring events like seasonal changes, planting and harvest time, breeding season for certain prey, when the swallows return to Capistrano, etc.
Is anyone is this thread arguing that?
My question was if there would be a need to track birthdays precisely or even within a single year.
It depends whether you regard religious or astrological reasons, or rituals performed at certain ages, as a ‘need’. Probably there were some some groups who kept track of ages and birthdays, and many who didn’t.
Very good point - I wonder then if some form of early astrology would be the impetus for marking and remembering birth dates, even if they were not celebrated as such? (I.e. fortune telling or character analysis based on the sun, moon, and stars…) Obviously for example, the Chinese calendar of year cycles (“Year of the Rat”) would cause people to remember how many years old someone is. You’d have to be some old before you start dropping a dozen years at a time.
IIRC the Chinese zodiac is based on observations of Jupiter (which has a nearly twelve year orbit).
There is a Chinese tradition, I don’t know how old or what it is called, where you put a bunch of stuff in front of a baby on the first anniversary of their birth. The stuff has to be associated with careers, personality traits, etc. Whatever the baby goes for, is supposed to be a prediction of their future.
Obviously the baby is not going to know when it has been a year(, barring child development milestones which aren’t precise), it would have to be tracked by adults.
~Max
I don’t think a baby could use child development milestones to figure out that it’s been very roughly a year either. 