Relatively Absolute. Absolute and Relative Chronologies of the Neolithic Period in Southeast Europe

Abstract

It is probably best assumed that the passage of time has been an important part of human reality for as long as humanity has existed. The notion of time, although likely not understood and measured by early hominids as it is today, was a self-evident fact of the cycles of life that each of us undertakes, from the moment of birth to the day of death. It became even more important to understand and measure when humans first attempted to understand their environment, to put it under their control. Perhaps at first, it was enough to realise when it was a period of cold or hot weather, a time of bounty and scarcity but as the complexity of human livelihood began to emerge with the onset of the Neolithic, the concept of time must have started to matter even more. Time, an intangible concept that cannot be rewound, renewed or traded, is an intricate part of daily lives governing our actions and cycles. The realisation that we can measure and organise it in the order of the occurrence of events to establish its flow was as important to the humans of the past as much as the concept of growing your own food resources and living in organised societies settled in specific environments. Certain authors (Aveni 1989) argue that the perception of time is inborn to living beings, evidenced through behaviours regulated by circadian cycles, but the measurement of time is surely a cultural product. Mankind, most likely even before the time of the Homo Sapiens, must have been aware of the biological time, evidenced in the individual phases of life that each living being goes through from birth to death. But the motion beyond that realisation, one that would cause the development of the concept of physical time; the time that exists as an external, measurable entity, must have demanded more than the inborn quality...