As civilization became more sophisticated and less agrarian, the need to be able to split up the day into units became more necessary.  It was noticed early on that the shadow casted by a stick in the ground, a tree. or any tall straight structure such as a Obelisk could identify different points in the day.  These objects were the forerunners to the sundial know as gnomon.  Of course, a stick or object in the ground gave only a general idea what portion of the day it was … so with the need of more accuracy, the gnomon was added to a plate that was divided into equal parts to show different parts of the day and voila, thesundial is born.  As we know, this just created more “time keeping” problems.  What happens on cloudy days, at night, as the length of days change ?  Man was up for the challenge and we will consider the early solutions on the next entry of “The History of Time …”.