I’m reading a book in which a character (late 1800) sleeps in a barn and wakes up at dawn to go hunting. This made me think, he wanted to wake up early, but how did he do that? So my exact question is: how were people able to wake up at a certain hour before things as alarm clocks were invented? I guess that during the medieval period clocks already existed, but most of the vulgus and people who lived in rural area could not afford to have one. Or even before that, let’s say the Roman period, how did people in general managed their time and routine without a precise time reference except for the daylight?

Did waking up at a certain hour became a thing in our culture after the clocks became mainstream?