Nobody knows the absolute beginning of time. All scientists can do today is make educated guesses. 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was theorized to have begun with the Big Bang. It’s a super massive explosion of concentrated energy that sent a huge amount of matter outward into space. These tiny pieces of matter soon created stars, planets, and everything within the cosmos.

1. When Did The World Start
Keeping Track Of Time?
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2. Nobody knows the absolute beginning of time. All scientists can do today is make
educated guesses. 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was theorized to have begun with
the Big Bang. It’s a super massive explosion of concentrated energy that sent a huge
amount of matter outward into space. These tiny pieces of matter soon created stars,
planets, and everything within the cosmos.
To say that a lot of time has passed since is an understatement. But people obviously
didn’t keep track of time by then. When they did begin to do so, the question is when?
A Brief History of Time... Keeping
The science of measuring time is called chronometry. In ancient times, post-hunter
gatherer societies grew crops for food. By then, they already have a basic understanding
of when to plant and harvest crops. To do so, they had to keep track of time. This basic
need is what purportedly led to the invention of the earliest known method of tracking
time: the 12-month lunar calendar with 29 and 30-day months. It’s the predecessor of
the modern Gregorian calendar that most of the world still uses today.

3. Credit the Ancient Sumerians (people who lived in Fertile Crescent, which encompasses
modern day Egypt and Iraq) with creating the lunar calendar over 4,000 years ago.
Before that, there are no written accounts of other ancient civilizations and their
timekeeping methods. While civilizations definitely existed before the Sumerians (the
Ein-us-Sultan people date back to 10,000 years ago, for one), they weren’t known to be
timekeepers like the former.
Other Contributors
One still can’t count the Ancient Egyptians out of the picture. Archaeologists believe
that these people are among the first responsible to divide days into hours. It is
believed, however, that their timekeeping methods were derived largely from Sumerian
techniques. What served as the first ‘clocks’ were obelisks that acted as sundials.
Sundials work by casting shadows on a predetermined measurement to indicate what
time of day it is. They were even made into handhelds—flat stones with time division
lines drawn on them. These were probably the first personal chronographs, and they
date back to 3,500 years ago.

4. Sources:
 http://www.haldavis.com/services/
 http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20121123/news/711239778/
 https://www.torgoen.com/blog/?p=55
Further down the timeline, the Ancient Greeks and Romans perfected Egyptian and
Sumerian techniques and technology. The Age of Exploration in the 14th Century
employed ‘water clocks’ which used dripping water as a way of measuring time. But
since ship expeditions often lasted long, sailors needed a more accurate device. The
‘revitalization’ of the hourglass, which was invented hundreds of years earlier in
Alexandria, Egypt, occurred during this age.
The world’s obsession with time came upon as a necessity of life. And it continues to
this day.