A misconception can hide the real working principle for millennia.

The sundial was misunderstood for at least 3000 years, if you count from egyptian shadow clocks (1500 BC) to heliocentrism (1543), but it is likely that people have been sticking sticks and stones in the ground for timekeeping purposes much longer (consider Stonehenge), presumably without grasping the mindnumbing thought that it is the ground that is rotating.