Did ancient people know about what we would today call “time zones?” And if so, could they prove it?

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If they knew the earth rotated, then they could assume that noon happened at different times at different locations. But did they have a way to prove this without being able to travel or communicate fast enough to observe the effects?

In: Mathematics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in around 240BC, so the requisite knowledge was available, and really implicitly required for his calculation. The idea of “time zones” wouldn’t really be useful until accurate timekeeping was invented. If you don’t know what time it is where you are, it hardly matters what the time somewhere else is.

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