The need to time sacrifices drove one of the world's oldest systematic calendars.
The Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa lays out a five-year yuga calendar with intercalary (leap) months to keep lunar and solar reckoning aligned for ritual timing.
— Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa (Lagadha, c. 1400–1200 BCE)
Luni-solar calendars and intercalation (leap months) in modern timekeeping.
A genuine, defensible parallel.
This is solid early science: tracking the Sun and Moon precisely enough to insert leap months is real, quantitative observational astronomy — motivated by ritual but genuinely empirical.
Its parameters are crude next to later work (Āryabhaṭa is far more refined), but as one of the oldest dated astronomical texts anywhere, it is a real milestone.