why is the day divided into 24 hours, and we tell that time in 2 increments of 12? have there been other time-telling systems and history, and if so why didn’t they catch on?
In: Culture
Even in relatively recent history, not all cultures have used numerical systems for keeping time. From a linguistic perspective, there are languages that did not tell time with numbers until contact with Western civilization. For example, time telling in Hawaiian was not traditionally done with numbers, but rather through a very rich day part vocabulary that referenced sun and starlight and their interactions with nature. Rather than naming an hour with a number, there were several words for morning, afternoon, and night depending on the amount (or absence) of visible daylight and the height of the sun in the sky. Here are a few examples:
Po – when it’s dark enough to see the stars in the sky through the turning on the Milky Way
Aume – the dead of night before the eastern sky starts to brighten
Wana’ao – when the eastern sky starts to brighten enough to wake the roosters, and the sky gains a purple tint
Kakahiaka – when it’s light enough to walk around with no artificial light
This doesn’t answer the first or last parts of your question, but you can see that there are many timekeeping methods, even ones that don’t include numbers or time measuring instruments at all. Telling time with exactitude is something that is particularly engrained in Western mindsets, but has by no means been universal throughout history.
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