5 Answers

No, it was invented by man who used the sun and the moon to differentiate the days. 

The concept of time is one which has perhaps been in existence ever since mankind began to evolve. Time is mentioned in the first book of the bible with the world being created in 6 days and the Lord resting on the seventh. But time precedes this, and has always been measured, whether by marking the changes of the moon or the tides of the sea.

Time featured within both Egyptian and Roman civilisations, but some Stone Age cave paintings indicate that seasons were already being monitored and recorded. Time would have been important to people even in those times, in order to know when to sow, nurture and then harvest crops.

The Romans are generally credited with dividing up time as we know it today and they had sundials depicting hours and they regulated days and months as well as years.

However each civilisation, no matter how remote and uncivilised will have had some means of measuring time, even if the time was measured in different units, so no single culture or epoch can take absolute credit for 'inventing' time.

The Egyptians are the first group of people that we can reasonably prove took timekeeping seriously as a culture. Many believe that the Sumerians were thousands of years ahead of the game, but proof of this is only speculative. Around 3500 B.C., the Egyptians built obelisks—tall four-sided tapered monuments—and placed them in strategic locations to cast shadows from the sun. Their moving shadows formed a kind of sundial, enabling citizens to partition the day into two parts by indicating noon. They also showed the year's longest and shortest days when the shadow at noon was the shortest or longest of the year. Later, markers added around the base of the monument would indicate further time subdivisions.

Around 1500 B.C., the Egyptians took the next step forward with a more accurate “shadow clock” or sundial. The sundial was divided into 10 parts, with two twilight hours indicated. This sundial only kept accurate time (in relative terms) for a half day. So at midday, the device had to be turned 180 degrees to measure the afternoon hours.

A sundial tracks the apparent movement of the sun around the earth's celestial pole by casting a shadow (or point of light) onto a surface that is marked by hour and minute lines. That is why the shadow-casting object (the gnomon or style) must point towards the north celestial pole, which is very near Polaris, the North Star. The gnomon serves as an axis about which the sun appears to rotate.

<font size="2" face="Verdana">The sharper the shadow line is, the greater the accuracy. So, generally speaking, the larger the sundial the greater the accuracy, because the hour line can be divided into smaller portions of time. But if a sundial gets too large, a point of diminishing returns is reached because, due to the diffraction of light waves and the width of the sun's face, the shadow spreads out and becomes fuzzy, making the dial difficult to read.</font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana">In the quest for more year-round accuracy, sundials evolved from flat horizontal or vertical plates to more elaborate forms. One version was the hemispherical dial, a bowl-shaped depression cut into a block of stone, carrying a central vertical gnomon (pointer) and scribed with sets of hour lines for different seasons. The hemicycle, thought to have been invented about 300 B.C., removed the useless half of the hemisphere to give an appearance of a half-bowl cut into the edge of a squared block.</font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana">From the History of Time Keeping</font>

Different human civilizations in different stages of their development invented different ways of dividing, measuring and managing the time.

I agree with fishlet that turning our answers to this kinds of subjects into debates on religion (s) is exhausting, frustrating and in the end a lesson in futility.

Here we go again...Time is consciousness.Time= past..present..future Our conscious mind reveals desire...satiation...regret. A present desire...a future outcome...a past regret.That is all. Thank You.Peace.