I’m only aware of one method of measuring time before the invention of mechanical clocks, and that’s the sun dial. What other means existed?
Hourglass.
There is the clepsydra
Water clocks are some of the oldest time-measuring instruments.[1] The simplest form of water clock, with a bowl-shaped outflow, existed in Babylon, Egypt, and Persia around the 16th century BC. Other regions of the world, including India and China, also provide early evidence of water clocks, but the earliest dates are less certain. Water clocks were used in ancient Greece and in ancient Rome, as described by technical writers such as Ctesibius (died 222 BC) and Vitruvius (died after 15 BC).
That is a more “modern” invention (11th century “modern”).
Sundials are way back in BC times.
I read the OP as asking about anything prior to the invention of mechanical clocks; ie. before the 14th century. Besides sundials, hour glasses and clepsydras, there were clocks based on candles or incense sticks burning down, and astrolabes and other devices based on astronomical observations.
Pretty easy to measure days by counting sunups or sundowns. What was missing for short periods of times was a reliable interval to count. Before pendulums there were similar devices that used less regular mechanical movements with catch mechanisms. These could probably keep time in minutes for an hour or more.
Its not entirely clear but I assume you want time measurements shorter than one day.
If not, many moons ago we counted many moons. Different cultures tracked yearly cycles and the procession of time, whether as years of the king’s reign, images representing the main events of a year in calendrical systems or formal calendars, whether it was seasonal triggers or astronomical. But you probably don’t.
Over shorter timescales, there’s one’s pulse, and singing. Galileo is believed to have used both, in the experiments that led him to discover the pendulum effect (which was in turn the basis for most subsequent clocks).
Good singers and musicians do seem to have good timing. Wouldn’t help me but it’s an interesting path towards mechanical timing. I’m not sure how pre-pendulum mechanisms worked. They seem to be based on on a regular rotating component with a simple catch mechanism instead of an oscillating pendulum and catch. I saw a more modern version that used a weight swinging on a string that would wind and unwind around a couple of posts as a main shaft rotated. Don’t recall if it had a catch mechanism besides the time to wind and unwind the weighted string.
There’s a lot of articles out there that claim to show you how to find out how much time until sunset using your hands. That this method supposedly allows you to find the time to sunset to within 15 minutes seems doubtful.
I’ve seen methods like this used in movies for natives people, but those are hardly a reliable source. Don’t know whether this was used by ancient peoples, but seems that something like this was surely known to some people.
The sun’s position above the horizon (morning or evening) measured by hands could be used to coordinate activities. E.g., “Meet me at the buffalo kill site at one hand after sunrise.”
Ditto using the moon at some times of the month.
Water clocks are not very dependable.
The downside to all water clocks is that they are highly inaccurate because they depend on water flowing out through a small orifice, and the viscosity of water varies widely by a factor of about seven between 0 and 100 degC. To keep time within one minute per day would require the water temperature to be controlled to within 0.03 degC; not easy even today.
This temperature dependence was known by the Chinese of AD30.
And of course there are the issues of evaporation and freezing…
It is said that the phrase ‘better part of an hour’ is derived from the slower rate of water draining from a simple water clock which was a bowl with a tiny hole in side. A half empty mark on the inside of the bowl based on volume would not result in two equal half hours. Something closer to achieving a half hour mark could be made but still subject to error because of the lack of a good method of timing each half with smaller increments.
It’s pretty reliable - I actually use it quite regularly if I am outdoors hiking and need to estimate the amount of full daylight remaining - and it really is possible to get to within about 15 minutes of accuracy, especially when its less than 2 hands remaining.
I doubt that, since “better part of” is used with all sorts of measurements, not just time.
You doubt that is said, or you doubt that’s where the phrase is derived from? I doubt that’s the origin of it but you can find where it has been said. I don’t know any ancient languages used at the time of water clocks but seems suspect to me that a common English phrase like that applied in so many ways derived from ancient Latin or Greek related to water clocks and it’s just some more recently applied definition.
Of course it’s said; my point was that it’s used with all sorts of measurements, which naturally means it’s said. I doubt that its origins have anything to do with water clocks.
Another problem with the tank and outflow-hole kind of water clock is that the flow rate is not linear but is proportional to the square root of the head of the water.
This can be got round by having the nozzle as the input to the tank, fed from a constant head, and using a float to measure the water level. This does not help with the temperature problem or the freezing issue.
Wikipedia has a good page on water clocks.