Chapter 36 Chapter 10: The Ancient Time System

Predecessors have long noticed that in the ancient books before the Western Han Dynasty, the time-recording method is almost completely different from that of later generations. Instead of using the notation methods such as Zishi and Choushi, it uses Shishi, Fu (bubu) Shi, Rending, etc. when unfamiliar.This kind of terming of time can be seen everywhere in "Historical Records", "Hanshu", "Huangdi Neijing" and other books, and the unearthed bamboo slips and slips with written records before the Western Han Dynasty in recent years have also confirmed the practical use at that time. This is the timekeeping system.In order to explain the corresponding relationship between this set of time systems and later generations, some people have made annotations on this, for example, some people have made notes on both the time names and "Huangdi Neijing", thinking that these time names are synonyms of the twelve-hour system.However, there are 15 consecutive records in "Huainanzi Tianwenxun", and 14 different timelines in "Huangdi Neijing", so the understanding of the ancients was wrong.In recent years, people have made in-depth research on the time system of the Western Han Dynasty, and only then have they revealed the secret of the sixteen-hour system.The name of the 16-hour system and the corresponding relationship with the 24-hour system are as follows:

Since the lengths of day and night in winter and summer are different, whether the length of time occupied by winter and summer in each period of the sixteen-hour system remains to be further studied.In ancient times in foreign countries, there were also sixteen time periods. Whether there was such an exchange of time systems between different countries remains to be further studied.