Timezones were created relatively recently. When the fastest people could travel was by horse, they'd just pay attention to the sun wherever they were. But once railroads were built, the railroad companies had to get precise about time so the trains wouldn't crash. Also, the invention of the telephone (and similar long-distance instant communication) encouraged people to understand what time it was in the city they were calling, so they'd successfully find someone at home or work and wouldn't accidentally miss a phone appointment or wake up someone in the middle of the night. If someone who was very far away was simply "not here" and we couldn't instantly communicate with them or even travel there in less than a day, the idea of "time zone" would be useless to us.