• Question: When did we start recording time?

    Asked by fierylittle1 to Kate, Kieren, Nicola, Rowena, Roy on 14 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      The earliest written records are from ancient Babylon, pressed into wet clay tablets. They used time to measure the movements of the stars, and were pretty good astronomers to boot! Before that Neolithic monuments such as Stonehenge or Avebury, or Newgrange in Ireland are aligned with the sun at the solstice (longest day of summer) so they too were measuring time in years very accurately. Also in other cultures such as the Maya there are temples and optical illusions aligned with the solstice day, so once again before written history existed.

    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      There are records of people measuring the lengths of days for as long as there are records of civilisation. Years is more complicated as measurements were first not that good. Even as late as Tudor times we would still lose days every year which makes history hard. Sometimes the dates we use are projections back from how ee date now and tell us how long ago and other times we use the dates they would have used then even though days were skipped in between. When they skipped a week out of January to adjust the Gregorian calendar the peasants revolted. The wealthy said this was because they were too stupid to realise they weren’t losing days of their lives, but in fact they were clever: they realised they would get a week less harvest and have to pay their quarter yearly rent a week early! This is why the financial year begins in April. It used to be on the solstices and equinoxes when the sun goes from high to low in the sky (about 23 March for the one near April) but they had to shift the dates with the calendar!

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