• Railcar8095@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Any idea how they tracked time? AFAIK solar clocks are not consistent during the year. I can imagine some sort of water clock, but they would need a master one to use as reference or very accurate specifications to reproduce.

    • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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      1 month ago

      Solar clocks are consistent during the year because noon is always at local noon. They just stop telling time effectively early or later depending on the season (i.e. how long the sun is shining). You just measure time around noon and you are always accurate to local time (even the modern era navy did this). It only matters if you need to synchronize time from very far away, which ancient people didn’t really need to do do.

      • Railcar8095@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I mean in the sense of measuring hours. Is it a constant angle from noon to 13:00, for example?

        Even the “local noon” would drift of you want you measure with constant hours of a24th of a day.