I'm exploring a little idea for a short story or small novel backstory, and I need help with a scientific question: how would you keep track of time, like hours, days, years and so forth, if there was no daylight cicle? Let's say you are stuck in a permaday, and the sun moves imperceptibly across the sky over the course of years, how could you keep time in these conditions in a low-technological environment? Is anyone able to throw me an answer?

Stomache growls and observing the animals.

In the absence of an environmental indicator, the body would settle into its own system based on its needs.

Make a sun dial.

Edit Oh no day.. hmm

A waterclock.

Permaday. A sundial would work to make the slow movement of the sun, but it would have no meaning to life in that situation.

Perhaps you could explore it from a different angle. Let's ponder a few:

- Without a day/night cycle, the human species may no longer be controlled by the Circadian Rhythm

- Without the transit of the Sun, the meaning of hours would be a moot point.

- Time itself, therefore, may be heaped upon the decaying pile of history.

An interesting story idea, imo, may come from the very lack of timekeeping.

Everything would be different. Work, feeding, exploration...Not even the basis of navigation (Longitude) would exist. A writer faced with no transit of the Sun, which is the base cause of our circadian rhythm, which is the base cause of all our other activities (including the prefferred hour of attack)...

Good luck with that. This idea could be your boon or bane. It all depends on the angle of your approach and understanding of what would cease to matter.

Hope that helps

An hourglass of some sort would also work.

Water clock and a stick.

Maybe check into what Edgar Rice Burroughs did about time in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellucidar stories (hollow earth).

You have tides?

I think we're the only ones to have thought of this. I'm surprised.

Sing 99 bottles of beer on the wall in reverse in my head until I go insane.

The year of our booze 8739 or just 8739 bb(beer bottles)

Wear a watch and wait it to go around twice.

Or since a watch may be too "High-tec" You could have clocks on every single building and have giant clock towers all over the place. I think right at the year 1300 clocks became a reliable way to tell time.

I think I should be more precise. In my vision of the world, there is some sort of day/night circle, but it's so slow that a person can be born early in the morning and get to legally drink alcoholic beverages before early evening. This, as many of you observed, renders everyday timekeeping a bit useless (unless, let's say, we want to organize some sort of race). A means to keep time on a larger scale is needed tho, otherwise there would be no history (and story) at all, because nobody could place an event of the past in the right place in time.

I thought that I could place a moon in the night sky that could turn around on a daily basis like the moon in real life, and lunar cicles are a good way to keep time, but a moon would mostly work during the night. The waterclock and the clocktowers are very good ideas for everyday timekeeping, and since there's no circadian rythm to speak of the daily routine of people could be dictated by some sort of clocktower guild that operates the clocktowers for the benefit of everyone. But what about historians, how can they place a fact somewhere in history if it happened during a day? Sundials are an interesting solution... Or maybe is the clocktower guild saving the day again?

Well, was there ever a 365 day year? If so the solution is simple. The clock hand must rotate 730 times for a year to occur, and however many time for a month.

Or if not the clock hands could rotate like 100 times for a month, and 1000 times for a year.

Do you have seasons? The cycle of seasons could give you a year equivalent.

I was planning on implementing seasons in this way: summer during the day, autumn late day/early eveniong, winter during night and spring late night/early morning, so I cannot tie them to years, because this way a normal person would live only a year, or a year and a half, and most importantly a year would coincide with a day. I'd like to have Days, as in full day/night cicles, then seconds, hours days months years and such as a way of timekeeping, unrelated to day/night cicles.

Wonderwombat is right, and I surely wouldn't be wrong to follow that system, but it still feels somewhat artificial. Like, it's ok for a developed society, even a low tech one, but what with their prehistoric ancestors? if they hadn't any natural mean to feel some sort of everyday time passing, why would they mind to build "year-clocks" later?

Astronomy might be the only way. Primatives can still see and mark the movement of celestial bodies. That could also give you a mythology to work with.