Before they made calendars based on visual stuff like the moon or
the sun, people must have, in antiquity, had calendars based on
physical cycles, probably the most recent and significant of which
would have been the moon - menstruation bridge, but a more
ancient relative may have been an INGROWN
TOENAIL CALENDAR,
based in the increment of time that it took for the average human,
between tearing a toenail off and feeling the pain of the resulting
ingrownn toenail, to become conscious of the connection. It's kind
of a measure of consciousness to be able to relate the two, much
like at some point it would have measured our consciousness to be
able to connect the full moon and ovulation cycles.
My reading of ingrow toenails is that they first happen on the big toe
as a result of tearing a relatively soft toenail away so that it is too
short -- and the corner of the nail grows into the soft puffy skin at
the edge of the nail. To avoid them you can not tear your toenails,
which takes you remembering that the pain results from the original
tearing of toenail, which talkers a certain power of memory and
association, which must have developeded at some point in our
evolution, coincidental to the softness and shape of both our
toenails and the surrounding fold of skin.
The increment of time, which is around a week, would probably
have been drawn together our first ancestors in the recognition of
that time increment because the ones who did recognize it spent
more of their time having babies then the ones who didn't recognize
it and spent more of their time stubbing their painful toes in the
process of chasing Dow wolly mammoths. There may have been
clans of our ancestors based around this recognition, Clan of the holy
Toe- Week, and religious customs - thou shalt not tear thy toenails.