Not without clocks, you don’t.
You’d have a rough idea, even without clocks. Can’t get as much done before nightfall as days get shorter.
A rough idea isn’t going to get you within ten days’ accuracy
Did people in ancient/pre-history time have a need to know their birthday? If they did, they’d figure out a way to keep track. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t care.
Having done a lot of genealogy I can tell you that remembering your birthdate wasn’t even that important to people in the 19th century. Once you were past the age related milestones of confirmation and age of majority years blended into each other with the same cycle of labor and events. If you weren’t actively literate you didn’t have much reason to pay attention to what year it was.
I expect pre-historic people generally thought of time in terms of events, since we find that tendency even in historic records. E.g. “I was born the year before the flood that washed half the camp away.” Some might have kept track of the number of winters (or other culturally important season) they’d lived, but I doubt it was universal.
My mother-in-law was born in a small town in West Africa. We don’t know exactly what year. It wasn’t part of their culture or society to keep track of years lived, so they didn’t.
Unless you’re in the tropics/near the equator in which case there isn’t a difference
As far as I can see nobody has mentioned the stars as a way of tracking the time of year.
That would have been the major way of doing so, especially in places where there wasn’t much seasonal variation.
Constellations that can be seen in the evening sky change from month to month.
Stars rise and set four minutes earlier each night and, as a result, we see constellations rising and setting two hours earlier each month. They move by 90 degrees from one season to the next and return to the same position after a full year.
Each constellation is best seen in the evening sky at a certain time of year, whether it only briefly shows up above the horizon or it is visible throughout the year from a certain location.
That’s because you have lived your entire life encased in concrete and steel boxes.
But if you lived in and with nature, you would know the difference between Dec 1 and Feb 1 because in Dec you have been feeling chilly for a month, but by February you have been shivering every day for 90 days.
And there are lots of other clues in nature, which we modern people are oblivious to. But if your only source of food is the stuff growing around you, then you would recognize a hundred different types of plants, and know in detail.how deep their roots are,when their seeds are edible,etc.
Sure, but I was envisioning more a case in which I’m warped down into a random date to determine what day of the year it is. Given the context of a whole year, I would be likely to guess correctly within a couple weeks, at most. I suppose that is the more likely scenario posited before, and more in keeping with the thread, so I take back my objection.
First leaf and first bloom dates have a range of around 20 days. Maybe you could get a better idea by looking at more indicators… but nature doesn’t seem all that reliable.
As long as you’re just counting days, you don’t have to bother with temperature or plants.
Births used to be recorded in Family Bibles. They’re a very good source for genealogy. Unfortunately Bibles can get lost. My moms sister took the family Bible when cleaning out my grandmother’s house. My aunt died a few years later. The Bible has never been seen since. There was at least 4 generations of information lost.
I can remember older people in my childhood that didn’t know their exact age.
I searched Google colonial gravestones. Most only include date of death. Some include an age.
Going further back in history, knowledge of calender dates may have been limited to the upper classes.
Also most of the early civilizations that were inventing calendars and writing were fairly close to the equator–much less yearly variation in day lenght.
(ETA: Deadly Asian Assassined, I see.)
You are working off a very different definition of “ancient”
What does any of that have to do with the OP who asked about the time before calendars?
The OP asked about people knowing their birthdate and age.
I was attempting to make the point that DOB is a fairly modern concept. Genealogy relies heavily on church records for that information. That information is relatively modern compared to ancient times.
It’s my understanding the earliest calendars were kept by priests tracking the equinoxes and solstices. The tribes relied on their priests to tell them the start of the seasons. They relied on oral tradition to tell stories and sing songs of the past. The concept of precise dates on a calendar came later.
It is interesting to ask if early people marked the passage of years. Marks scratched on a rock wall (tally marks). That would require a number system and understanding of how to count.
I think this is the OP’s answer. The concept of tracking time requires a basic understanding of counting. Do the people see a need for tracking the passage of years? This article describes notched sticks and bones.
Tally sticks were still used in fairly recent times. It was a bonfire of these that set the Palace of Westminster on fire in 1834.
In a primitive society where everything would be pretty communal, there would be no great need for counting stuff, so time passing, like full moons for example, might be something worth recording. Any way of predicting the future is going to confer power on the predictor.
Regardless of that, it’s hard to see what advantage there would be in knowing how many winters had passed since whatever - birth/flood/invasion? Maybe in the short term - “This many winters ago.” hold up some fingers, but who would care really?
Hmmph… just like OKCupid.