atavism

Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be trusting some older, more subtler instrument.  Astrolab or sextant.  Like a man bent at fixing himself in someway in the world.  Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was.

--Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing