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Young YOU| Calendars and time

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Today we have accurate clocks and calendars to help us keep track of time. (Photo: Getty Images/Gallo Images)
Today we have accurate clocks and calendars to help us keep track of time. (Photo: Getty Images/Gallo Images)

Since prehistoric times, people have looked to the movements of the sun, moon and stars, the changing seasons and dawn and dusk to try to tell the time.

These observations were necessary to plan agricultural activities or to organise religious festivals. The need to tell the time led to the development of clocks and calendars. Let’s find out more.

The need to record the passage of days and seasons led to the Ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Greeks and Romans creating timekeeping devices such as obelisks, sundials, hourglasses and water and candle clocks. In the third century BC, Greek mathematician Archimedes was the first person to add gears to a water clock, which improved its accuracy.

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