When the sun was down how did societies that used sun dials know how much time has passed?
In: 7
To be clear, most people didn’t have hour glasses or astronomy or whatever. They just didn’t know.
Perhaps they’d hang around in the twilight/just after dark or eat or whatever in the evening (especially in the winter when the nights were long). Then they’d sleep.
Artificial light, from say candles, was expensive. It took a lot of labour to prepare candles or collect fire wood.
Many people in pre industrial times had ~~diurnal~~ biphasic sleep cycles – meaning they’d wake up in the middle of the night to do… stuff. Then go back to sleep. Then it’d be morning.
Kinda how like you (hopefully) sleep late evening to the morning without really thinking about time, even if you wake up a bit in the night.
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