How did people refer to clockwise movement before the invention of the clock?

"Sunwise", and for the exact same reason.

Clocks go clockwise because their predecessors did. What were their predecessors?

Sundials.

How does the shadow go around a sundial? Well, sunwise, of course.

Counterclockwise, as said in another comment, was "widdershins", from a Middle Low German phrase meaning "against the way".

Well, clocks are just mechanical sundials. Before clockwise, there was sunwise (or deosil), and clocks' movements are based off of the movement of a shadow across a sundial.

A guy I know owns this clock, which basically proves that everything in life is pointless and arbitrary:

Turnwise and widdershins. I read it in a book once.

Turnwise and widdershins

Good question!

The real answer seems to be "right" and "left".

Source: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/174112

Imagine you're in the Northern Hemisphere and you face east toward the rising sun. Over the course of the day, the sun will seem to move to the south, and then set in the west. This forms a "sunwise" turn, which is what we now call "clockwise" because we made clocks in imitation of sundials.

Deosil, which is the direction the shadow on a sundual moves (in the Northern Hemisphere).

This turned out to be a surprisingly fascinating question lol.

As someone who still confuses these "turn it around that way" - jiggles hand in vague motion- "oops no the other way" usually works just fine.

To your second question, the direction of clockwise is mostly influenced by sundials. In the northern hemisphere the shadows move in a clockwise direction, and so the early clocks made in the northern hemisphere mimicked that. In the southern hemisphere it's naturally reversed, but because so much of that hemisphere is either empty ocean or colonized lands, the clocks move in the same direction. Bolivia had a sort of flash in the pan moment in the news about a decade back for reversing their clock direction on a big central clock (think like big ben) as a way of staking their independence from a colonial past.

On the first question, I have no idea. But in Sweden they use terms that translates to "with the sun" and "against the sun" but I don't remember what they are without googling it.

Semi related: QI uploaded this bit the other day about an aboriginal tribe that can flawlessly pinpoint north/east/south/west.

https://youtu.be/0aAcYZPpfG0?si=E3xVhFcsCl8gDZpo

In czech, we have a phrase "jak sa kráje chleba" (same way as a bread is sliced). Problem is, that (at least in my social group) nobody knows, wether it means clockwise or anticlockwise, as everybody slices the bread differently.

It's just negative rotation

I have the feeling that the direction of the water in the toilet when flushing plays an important role here.

No, the other way..

I don't have an answer for the original question, but what about just saying rotate right/left?

I mean, if I imagine a circle rolling on a flat surface, rotating right means the rotation that rolls the circle right (so clockwise rotation), and rotating left would be the opposite; where the circle rolls left.

It is a non-existing problem, because they were talking in other languages then.