When did people start counting time?

Question

In other words- when did someone say: "ok, now it's 12:00 pm, we are counting from now on, set your watches?,,,"

I hope I made my question clear...

Answer 1

It didn't quite happen that way.

People used the sun and sun dials for a long time before our current system of time. Then they started tracking night-time times with water-clocks and similar things.

But there weren't universally recognized time systems, or such things as our current standard hours and minutes.

When clocks (as we know them) began to be made, there wasn't a universal, world-wide time setting.

Monks created the first machines to measure time, to "sound" the time for their religious rituals. (They didn't have universal standards, but varied by place and religious order.)

Around 1330 he got our standard hour.

Towns started building clock towers to sound time for the town (people didn't have their own clocks yet), measuring time from noon to noon or maybe sunset to sunset (or maybe it varied) in 24 1-hour increments.

Minutes came much later.

I don't know when we started world-wide synchronization.

Answer 2

Men have been "counting time" since prehistory, when they noticed the movement of shadows as the sun passed overhead. If one lives at a spot for a while, it doesn't take long to figure out when is "noon" just by watching a well-chosen shadow cast by a fixed object.