Reading & UoE Part 3 - Word Formation

Understanding Time

Since the earliest times, civilisations have understood the importance of time. If you want to plan your future or simply know how long things take to do, then the precise (1) ...................... (MEASURE) of time is a necessity. That's why ancient cultures put such a lot of effort into the development of (2) .............................. (RELY) calendars and clocks.

At first, people used the (3) .......................... (OBSERVE) of movements in the night sky as a way of predicting annual events. The Ancient Egyptians realised that it would be (4) .............................. (USE) to divide days up into smaller units of time. They were responsible for the (5) ....................................(INVENT) of the system of twenty-four hours in a day that we still use today.

The first clocks were sundials using the (6)........................... (LONG) of the Sun's shadow to mark the passing of the day. This worked well in sunny countries but was (7) .................. ................ (APPROPRIATE) for places where the sky was often cloudy. People living there had to wait for the development of the mechanical clock before they could tell the time with any degree of (8) ........................................ (ACCURATE).