Ancient humans used the moon as a calendar in the sky
Cave art and stone carvings reveal early humans’ time-tracking sophistication
TIMEPIECE Archaeological evidence suggests that early humans used the moon as a timekeeper, as first argued during the Apollo missions.
Kym MacKinnon/Unsplash
The sun’s rhythm may have set the pace of each day, but when early humans needed a way to keep time beyond a single day and night, they looked to a second light in the sky. The moon was one of humankind’s first timepieces long before the first written language, before the earliest organized cities and well before structured religions.