taken,
would naturally assume leadership and command obedience and respect.

The sense of responsibility, superiority and, possibly, rivalry would act
upon such individuals as a powerful incentive to further observation and
thought and it is evident that, as their mental faculties expanded and one
generation transmitted its store of accumulated knowledge to the next, a
regular caste of astronomer-leaders would develop, with a tendency to
conceal the secrets of their power from the ignorant majority. A broken
line, carved on a rock by one of these primitive observers, would have
constituted a valuable secret note of the position of Ursa Major on a
memorable occasion and would be looked upon as a mystic or magical sign by
the uninitiated. A series of such inscriptions might represent the store
of astronomical knowledge accumulated by several generations of observers,
and it is interesting to recognize that such astronomical records as these
were probably the first which men were impelled to perpetuate in a lasting
form; since it was absolutely necessary that they should be permanently
available for reference at prolonged intervals of time. What is more, the
mere fact of being obliged to refer to these inscriptions would cause the
astronomers to reside permanently in one locality. The habit of consulting
the prophet or oracle before undertaking important steps, involving the
welfare of the tribe, would gradually cause the rocks or cavern in which
he resided to be invested with a certain sacredness.

It is thus evident that the first men, who rudely scratched the outline of
Ursa Major or Minor on a rock, took what was probably one of the most
momentous steps in the history of the human race, and it is easy to see
how a variety of combinations of circumstances would have led many men, in
widely-separated localities and at different periods of the world's
history, to perform precisely the same action. In some cases, under
favorable surroundings, the rudimentary attempt would mark the starting
point for a long line of patient observation and study, which would
inevitably lead to the creation of centres of intellectual growth, to the
association of the different positions of the constellation with the
seasons and culminate in the habitual employment of a swastika as the sign
for a year, or cycle of time.(2)

The idea of rotation, associated with calendar signs and periods, finds
its most striking and convincing exemplification