When the sun was down how did societies that used sun dials know how much time has passed?
In: 7
There are several answers here, but all of them sort of ignore the point. Until modern times, what time it was didn’t matter in the slightest. People would get up when the sun came up, eat breakfast and then go to work. They ate lunch around midday. When the sun went down, time to go home, eat dinner, and then go to bed. Whether that was 6 AM you got up or 8 AM that you got up, no one knew or cared. Whether it was 11:30 or 2:30 that you ate lunch, no one knew or cared. Whether you went to sleep at 8 PM or 10 PM no one knew or cared.
Nothing started at a set time or finished at a set time. Church started when the church bell rang. Even when schools came around, they started when the school bell rang. If the school bell rang one day at 7:30 AM and another at 8:30 AM, no one knew or cared.
The first thing that time actually started mattering was trains. Trains would start to run on set schedules so they needed reliable ways then of knowing when it was time for the 10 AM train to leave. By that point, clocks were a common thing.
Latest Answers