How Did Ancient Civilizations Count Time?

People used the sun and moon to count time. Like how we use a clock today, ancient people watched the sky. When the sun went down, they knew it was night, that was one day. They also noticed the moon changing shape every month, so they counted months with the moon’s cycle. Some people even used their fingers or stones to remember days and weeks!

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Examples

  1. A farmer used stones to count the days between planting and harvesting.
  2. A child counted months by watching how the moon changed shape each night.
  3. A tribe marked a bone with scratches to remember important events.

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Categories: History · timekeeping· ancient history· civilizations · Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.