I know many cultures have different calendars, but what about different clocks or subdivisions or days?

by stupidrobots

I've never heard of an alternative to the hours/minutes/seconds system we have now

scarlet_sage

Asking a question that's been asked before is fine. Mentioning previous answers is intended as a quick starting point, not to discourage further discussion. Follow-on questions, information, and debate is more than welcome.

You might find interesting "How were our current units of time agreed upon?" at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3vxb5d/how_were_our_current_units_of_time_agreed_upon/ , answer by /u/kookingpot .

moxthunder

There are a few tribes that track the passage of time differently but days are basically Universal as they track the sun rise / sun set.

As for the year, it was more classically thought of a seasons, and tracked by marking the position the sun rises in over time. The period of 365 days probably wasn't quantified, but many classical civilizations had monuments designed to track the position of Sunrise. Once the sun had tracked it's full cycle that was considered the year. So the number of days in a year could float a few days left and right. But what season it was likely would have been far more important than how many years has it been since we started tracking them.

There are some fascinating monument calanders across the globe. All are breathtaking and I'd recommend googling them as they are gorgeous and wonderous monuments of classical engineering.