In Lockyer we can find this statement:

"We know, by means of the demonstration afforded by Foucault's pendulum, that the earth rotates on its axis, but this idea was, of course, quite foreign to these early peoples."

I disagree. There is no 'of course' in this. For a pendulum you need only a string and a weight. Why couldn't 'these early peoples' (referring to ancient Egypt etc) have discovered this effect? A pendulum follows the stars, not the play of day and night.

A pendulum is also a model of how the year behaves: There are two 'poles' where motion slows down, stops and reverses. And in the middle in between speed is at its maximum, like at the equinoxes.

Why should we think of two equinoxes? There is only one point the pendulum model suggests. And in Hamlet's Mill somewhere it says that the most ancient thoughts about mills seem to be not of a model where rotation continues forever in one direction but a model where the direction changes periodically. Like the hand querns the women work in 'primitive societies'.