Ways of Telling Time and Keeping Records

Many cultures used a variety of ways to tell the passage of time or to record important events. Before handwriting developed, people kept records by making marks, drawing pictures, or erecting huge stone monuments.

We think that the existing standing stones found in Brittany, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England were built to mark four seasonal changes: two solstices and two equinoxes. Ancient people, between 4000 and 2000 B.C., built these giant stone monuments, like Stonehenge in England, to observe the precise rising and setting of the sun at the solstices and equinoxes. (Unfortunately, over time farmers have used a number of the standing stones for walls and buildings, so we don’t know how many there once were.) The Great Pyramids of Egypt were built later than the oldest stone circles, between 2600 and 2400 B.C.