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But I have to wonder if there are any developmental disadvantages in the modern world for a country if too many people approach time this way?
Of course! Modern society requires a level of coordination that was not traditionally needed. As we improve productivity, one could imagine a greater amount of leisure time being granted. Europe already does this moreso than the US.
With the exception of full moons any kind of outside activity would have ground to a halt because of the near absolute darkness. It's hard to imagine just how dark the ancient world would have been without the 21st century all night all pervasive indoor and outdoor artificial lighting.
With the exception of full moons any kind of outside activity would have ground to a halt because of the near absolute darkness. It's hard to imagine just how dark the ancient world would have been without the 21st century all night all pervasive indoor and outdoor artificial lighting.
You might like to read up on the history of segmented sleep.
Quote:
The first scholar to put consolidated sleep—today’s standard ‘one straight shot throughout the night’—under the microscope was historian Roger Ekirch. In his fascinating 2001 essay ‘Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles,’ Ekirch revealed that across a wide range of nationalities and social classes in early modern Europe and North America, the standard pattern for nighttime sleep was to do it in two shifts of ‘segmented sleep.’ These two sleeps—sometimes called first and second sleep, sometimes ‘dead sleep’ and ‘morning sleep’—bridged an interval of ‘quiet wakefulness’ that lasted an hour or more. (The interval itself was sometimes called ‘the watching.’) Ekirch’s subsequent work offered evidence that a segmented nighttime pattern persisted well into the twentieth century in many non-Western locales, including among indigenous cultures in Nigeria, Central America, and Brazil. During the period of nighttime wakefulness, Ekirch showed, different cultures elaborated rituals—of prayer, lovemaking, dream interpretation, or security checks—and while the rituals varied, the pattern itself was so pervasive as to suggest an evolutionary basis that somehow became disrupted in the modern West.
Africans were based on emotional rather than mechanical time,you can understand a lot of ancient ways of being by just studying tradtional tribal societies.Look up African emotional concept of time.
Africa is very, very large, with thousands of tribes or traditional nations (now reduced to a mere 54). Do you really think there was one concept of time for the whole continent?
That is very interesting, I had not been aware of this concept before... Thanks for sharing.
During the medieval period it was the norm. Your rose early and did your duties, usually preparing for the day, depending on your task, and a light breakfast. They took advantage of the best light, and as evening approached, and darkness, returned home to sleep. But they did much more than sleep. After waking in early evening, they would visit friends, play games, eat their evening meal with friends, and act as we might in the evening. Candles were used to light rooms and pathways between homes. When things had wound down, they returned to their own beds and slept till morning, rested well from the relaxed evening. But they'd visited, dined, washed, played and just relaxed and were ready to sleep again.
It sounds like a night person's paradise. Someone to talk to when you have a great idea at 3am, other than online. In the morning they were rested for the day and it repeated.
Days belonged to the world outside, Nights belonged to themselves.
Before clocks and watches how did ancient people organize their time for doing things?
They were mostly farming/agrarian cultures
Only time that mattered was sunrise and sunset
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