• procrastitron@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    100% This.

    Also, being an evolution of sundials is the reason all analog clocks move their hands in the same direction.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 hours ago

        Sundials were almost certainly invented in the Northern Hemisphere and probably didn’t break into the southern hemisphere until late antiquity at the earliest, so it kinda makes sense that it’d be centered around that concept. Also clocks were invented in the northern emisphere as well, wait are there southern hemisphere clocks that turn the opposite way like those maps where the southern hemisphere is on top?

        • Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 hours ago

          Sundials were absolutely surely invented several times around the world, also in Australia etc. After all, a sundial is nothing but a stick in the ground.

          If mechanical clocks were invented before colonizers arrived, then the colonizers’ clocks eventually replaced them. But, I understand they were invited only after all of the southern hemisphere had been colonized by less civilized nations, so they follow the colonizers’ standards everywhere.

    • sircac@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      I was answering about the Northern/Southern hemisphere logic of this… and realised that it depends if the sundial is vertical in a wall (facing South in the Northern hemisphere) or horizontal (facing the zenith/sky)… today you can easily find those wall sundials in many monumental buildings (at least these seem to me more common than the others) and the shadow is casted counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere, so not sure if the clockwise sense was locked by sundials… also in the Southern hemisphere logic flips completely.

      • Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 day ago

        in the Southern hemisphere logic flips completely.

        In the southern hemisphere they think Australia is suitable for human life.