SUN WORSHIP — SPINDEN 455 



responses which rise above occult seasonal urges in most of his deal- 

 ings with nature. 



True solar cults doubtless await the domestication of food plants 

 and the establislmient of fixed abodes, but primitive hunting tribes, 

 as one may still learn by field work in ethnology, normally make 

 offerings and vows to the sun, also acquiring a practical knowledge 

 of solar and other celestial movements by continuous observation. 

 There are some areas in which primitive man seems strangely inert 

 to solar appreciations, aboriginal California being a good example. 

 But here where solar motives are inconspicuous in art and ceremony, 

 we find calendars of moons in general use. And calendars with 

 moons are relatively advanced. 



But the Australian blacks are primitive enough. They have no 

 months as we understand the term. Nor do the Indians who live 

 along the Amazon have months, and as for numbers, some tribes 

 lose all interest when these run above six. Yet both the Australians 

 and the Amazonians construct many marvelous constellations, and 

 both take note of the season when this or that star group makes its 

 first appearance in the east before sunrise. Each constellation in 

 order brings, they think, a food or an activity. These lowly human 

 societies correlate the year of the stars with the year of the sun. 

 Actually there is a 20-minute difference, amounting to 1 day in a 

 lifetime, which they do not recognize. 



The slightly erroneous belief that the sidereal year coincides 

 with the tropical year also was held 6,000 years ago in western 

 Asia. Ultimately, the testing of this concept produced the science 

 of astronomy or at least tremendously enriched it. Ultimately at- 

 tention to the sun and stars built up the power of kings and led to 

 high forms of religion. For out of the star groups that lay along 

 the path of the sun was formed the measured speedway of the 

 zodiac where the planets raced. Although this zodiac with its 12 

 classical signs is familiar enough to the modern man of the city, 

 he is less likely to associate it with studious astronomy than with 

 her flighty sister astrology. 



At first it was not the full, formal zodiac. The constellation of 

 the Bull marked the vernal equinox and those of the Lion and the 

 Scorpion the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox, respectively, 

 all determinable stations of the tropical year.^ Doubtless the first 

 appearances of other constellations were signals for dances honormg 

 various animal gods. Elsewhere in Asia, Europe, and Africa the 



' The swinging points of sunrise and sunset with the solstices at the two extremes, 

 and the equinox when sunrise and sunset shadows form a straight east-west line, are 

 universally recognized and the solstices commonly observed in ceremonies that pay 

 respect to the sun. 



