Abstract
THE study of the ideas of uncivilised races with regard to chronology has generally been left to travellers who derived their information from natives among whom they dwelt for only a short time. The progress of civilisation among such races has often made it difficult to obtain trustworthy information about the way in which the division of time was formerly regulated among them. When attempts have been made to collate the information to be found in books of travel and in works on ethnography, as has been done in the ninth chapter of Ginzel's “Handbook of Chronology” (vol. ii.), the result has been a collection of scraps rather than a systematically arranged account of the first steps made by mankind towards a knowledge of the division of time. The detailed work on this subject by Prof. Nilsson,1 of Lund, is, therefore, a most welcome addition to the literature of chronology, and, being based on a thorough study of the immense number of publications on the ways of primitive nations, it is fit to form an introduction to the great work of Ginzel, which chiefly deals with the chronological systems of more advanced races.
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DREYER, J. Primitive Chronology. Nature 107, 274–276 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107274a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107274a0