It is interesting how the ignorance of popular culture, as always, is getting so much incorrect based on even simple facts and logic. At its worst, social positions and divides are fueled by self-serving and often ignorant politicians and leaders. They exploit the inability of the majority of the population to weigh things up more carefully. People fail to realize they live in a complex world often without easy answers. You assume this doesn’t affect our neolithic exploration of landscape, earth, sky, and water. But, unfortunately, this is not the case.
The illustrative point is the Guardian article on the Autumn equinox. A journalist, who is normally reliable and knows better, proclaimed and reinforced the recent incorrect popular belief. According to this belief, Autumn starts on the equinox. It is adjusted for horizon atmospheric effects. This is where the sun appears longer than it would without, e.g. like on the moon. The atmospheric point is correct its just the Autumn start isn’t. Seasons vary across the globe, often different numbers of seasons, or none at all, and all of varying lengths. This is because seasons relate to the weather experience. They also relate to how plant life and animal life responds to the environment, land, sea, and atmosphere. The length of day is only part of the story.
In the UK, unusually we have relatively equal seasons, although they do blend into each other, but each season is generally considered to be 3 months long. Sometimes the summer can feel like autumn, autumn and spring like winter or summer. The winter can be severe or mild. Plants and animals etc., can be delayed or sped up in their life-cycles appropriately. So the meteorological rule of thumb for UK seasons is that Autumn starts in September and finishes the end of November. Any logic using solstices and the equinox would perhaps say autumn starts as summer finishes midway between the midsummer 21 June and the autumn equinox. This adjustment is approximately 23 September. Certainly, it is not the autumn equinox itself which is 3/4 of the way through the solar year. The last quarter would be half winter at least! The logic seems flawed. Days are less than 12 hours after the Autumn equinox. Still, 12 hours is not particularly significant to anything other than a mathematical point. Days get shorter after the 21st June. This change is noticeable quite some days later since the sun stands still on day length during the solstices. And we know that plants at least respond to the first change in day length just after mid summer, and mid winter. Also I am sure our long haired cat, molts and regrows the long hairs to the same pattern so they are ready for the hot and cold extremes.
We say autumn starts at the beginning of September. Similarly, spring starts at the beginning of March. This is because there is a lag in the effect of longer and shorter days. It takes time for the land and seas to noticeably warm up or cool down. Thus, the atmosphere warms or cools slowly enough to affect the weather. The living world also takes time to fully respond to these changes. Its a noticeable change in season, i.e. a season is a human experience of the solar year, not some astronomical mathematical marker.
Luckily, the Neolithic connection to the landscape is deep. As we often find, their skills in understanding it as a human experience are essential. This understanding is something most people would have and need to survive. No Neolithic person would have got the start of autumn wrong. Their monuments were based on the significance of the solar and moon calendar. This understanding helped them predict seasonal changes in the living world on which their survival relied. As modern populations, we get distracted by science. Science is often much harder to really understand than people think. This is because we are so disconnected and insulated from our natural environment. So most people’s skills in that area are exceedingly poor, not even understanding the science, and generally far less worthy in our view than Neolithic Joe/Jo Bloggs in this regard. No wonder we have trashed the planet. This is because we are unwitting or, to be unkind, dim-witted and self-centred about the Earth we survive on. At least we survive for now.