In the earliest primitive societies, people did not yet have an explicit concept of time. Through natural phenomena such as the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the alternation of cold and warm weather, people eventually arrived at the concept of time. The emergence of the oldest Chinese characters illustrates the transfer of meaning in the transition from concrete images to abstract concepts, i.e. the development of abstract temporal concepts from the observed cycles of the sun and moon. More
