and are edible; when birds nest and their eggs could be collected; when beasts drop their young and can be taken and eaten. In the same way, the cyclical movements of herd beasts from pasture to pasture according to the wet and dry seasons were important to the hunters following them.
In equatorial Africa, the birth place of the human species, two seasons of the year are known: wet and dry, with no significant change of temperature. The Himba people in Namibia (s. site) mark the coming of the New Year with the arrival of seasonal rains that transform the parched red soil into a carpet of green. According to the saying of a Namibian villager, “When the thunderstorms start and the leaves grow from the ground, that’s how we know it’s the New Year.”
As Homo sapiens began moving northward toward the Middle East and Europe, changes of cold and hot between the seasons were also noticed. Thus, in Mediterranean areas, the year is divided into two basic seasons: wet and cold winter; dry and hot summer. In time, further developments have occurred, making calendars all over the world different in their complexity.
Two prominent calendars have been founded on this basic idea: the ancient Babylonian (s. below), and the Jewish one – the latter still exists today. Such division has led to the possibility of two beginnings of the year. Following the Babylonian example, when Jewish leaders came back to the Land of Israel from their exile in Babylon in the 6th-5th cent. B.C., they brought with them, together with the Babylonian months’ names, a year beginning around the Spring equinox; at this time, in the words of the Biblical poet (Canticles 2,11), “Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over… and the