system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5 what was used to describe time before the clock?

Currently we used the term o'clock to define a specific time. What was used before we had clocks? Was it always sunrise, noon, sunset?
gpt
Pretty much.

Back in the day the exact time wasn’t as important, because they couldn’t really track it. So things were just “the morning, the evening, midday, midnight” etc etc.

Some places may have used sundials, which were invented in Egypt back like 3,000 years ago, and did kinda spread around the Mediterranean.

But those only worked when the sun was out, and really just tracked how far along the sky the sun was.

So for your average person, nothing was really that specific.