# BC/AD Year Dating Question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 14, 2022, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146 "2022-06-14T03:21:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/61 "2022-06-15T15:00:42Z")
Yes but we live in an era of the Gregorian calendar and widely tracked calendar years–I literally see the calendar year all day on my computer at the bottom right. If I was a peasant farmer in ancient Rome I imagine I would think more in terms of “this is my 60th winter” or some such. > [@Riemann](#): > > But my age is a variable that changes every year, and when the value no longer holds much significance (like reaching 16 or 18 or a landmark birthday like 50) I can quite easily forget the current value. I’m not going to _completely_ forget my age, but I sometimes have to think about it for a moment, plus or minus one. I regularly don’t “instantly” remember my age in years and have to think for a second, but I also don’t make a big to-do about my birthday and never have. I think in lots of pre-modern societies (and even some modern ones), people are a little more in tune with some of these things–maybe not the specific birth _day_, but the knowledge that you’ve crossed through another year (I think in some cultures people increment their conception of how “old” they are, with the New Year, not with the specific anniversary of their birth date, and that probably comes from such a tradition in the past of mostly tracking your annual cycles through life.) ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/62 "2022-06-15T15:23:46Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > If I was a peasant farmer in ancient Rome I imagine I would think more in terms of “this is my 60th winter” or some such. It’s probably what such a person would do but the older they get the more likely it is that they would be wrong. People who don’t calculate their age based on the year they were born are notoriously inaccurate. We’ve all heard of places were people are extremely long lived and we try to understand what makes them live so long. Inevitably, people in these place start keeping accurate records of births and deaths and life expectancy falls in line with other places where conditions are similar. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/63 "2022-06-15T15:58:58Z")
That isn’t really true, I think there’s substantial evidence the studies you are referring to actually point to (relatively) higher rates of pension claim fraud in places with poor recordkeeping. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/64 "2022-06-15T16:08:27Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > WRT the Romans, wouldn’t sticking exclusively with the reign of the consul system cause more difficulty when dealing with people from other cultures? This assumes that the Romans valued dealing with other cultures on their own terms, rather than saying “We are Romans, here is how we do things, get on board or get wrekt”. The story about the consul Popillius and the Seleucid king is probably apocryphal but I think it still gets the Roman attitude across - when asked for time to consider his proposals by the Seleucid king, Popillius allegedly drew a circle in the sand around the king and said “have your answer ready for me before you leave the circle”. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/65 "2022-06-15T16:15:12Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > It is far more typical of human societies, historically, to date things by notable events than by some standard. “She was born the year the river flooded, and the town built the new church, that is, twelve years ago.” We are STILL doing that, we’ve just been using the same event (of dubious historicity and date) for the last two millennia. I’ve suggested that we start the new count at 2020 and BC can stand for “Before COVID”. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/66 "2022-06-15T16:17:50Z")
In the early '70s there were many regions that were reported to have unusually large numbers of people over 100 years old. The claims were touted by various groups for various reasons but were not able to withstand scientific scrutiny. That’s the only claim I’m making but it goes far beyond higher rates of pension fraud. > **[Longevity in Abkhazia: A Reevaluation1](https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article-abstract/24/1/95/637911)** > > Erdman B. Palmore; Longevity in Abkhazia: A Reevaluation1, The Gerontologist, Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 February 1984, Pages 95–96, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/2 [https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1532-5415.1982.tb01685.x](https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1532-5415.1982.tb01685.x) ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/67 "2022-06-15T16:54:05Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > There was a real tendency that up to about age 35 almost everybody knew their age cold. Up around 60 to maybe 70, same thing. Between 35 and 60 it was much more likely to get an answer like “Hmm, I haven’t thought about that in awhile … 1985 minus 42 … I’m 43.” That’s pretty funny - I think it’s in accord with intuition, right? I retired early, so 65 won’t have much significance for me. But I think if I make it to 70, my awareness of my exact age might well kick in again - either because I’m proud that I can still do X and beat the youngsters, or because I’m worried that the aches and pains mean I’m about to die. ---
**Author:** ![ThisOneGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@ThisOneGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisOneGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/68 "2022-06-15T17:10:03Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Do most ordinary Japanese people think of the calendar that way? If the subject was the year that the US bombed Hiroshima, would they think to themselves”that was in the 18th year of the Showa era” or would the think “that was in 1945?” In conversation they use both, but do mostly use the “Showa 18” or “Heisei 3” when talking about when somebody was born or when something happened. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/69 "2022-06-15T17:27:52Z")
I’m aware–but I’m also saying my interpretation of it is that a lot of these claims (especially of high rates of centenarians) often seem to frankly be pension fraud. Something to keep in mind with statistics on extreme age–at very high age levels, the natural rate of such people is so low, that even a handful of pension fraudsters can make for a big difference in the rate of centenarians (and even super-centenarians) in a population. Several of these regions are associated with _broader_ regions of relatively high life expectancy (Okinawa:Japan, Sardinia:Mediterranean coast), but are also known to be relatively worse at keeping records than the broader country itself (which itself may keep records worse than other places.) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/70 "2022-06-15T17:44:01Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I’ve suggested that we start the new count at 2020 and BC can stand for “Before COVID”. While I 100% share your sentiment, it raises the controversy of whether “COVID-19” started in 2020 or 2019. For sure 2020 was the first year of widespread social disruption. But recent analysis has shown lots of excess death in later 2019 in the localized areas where it was gathering speed. Death that was not yet identified as novel as to volume or as to cause. But certainly _was_ novel in both aspects. And we’d also want to explicitly address the question of whether to interpose a year zero between PC (prior to COVID) and WC (with COVID). I suspect that “After COVID” will be sometime around 5000 CE if even then. So labeling the current era with “after” seems premature. Since 2020 was such a case of suspended animation worldwide, I propose “year zero” is a pretty good moniker for it. So 2019 would be 1PC, 2020 would be 0C and 2021 would be 1WC. I can just see the foaming conspiricists going apeshit if this modest proposal got any traction in the real workd. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/71 "2022-06-15T18:01:11Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > This assumes that the Romans valued dealing with other cultures on their own terms, rather than saying “We are Romans, here is how we do things, get on board or get wrekt”. The Romans had no problem dealing with subjugated peoples on the latters’ terms, as long as Rome’s political supremacy was acknowledged. Keep in mind that the eastern half of the Empire, i.e. pretty much everything east of the Adriatic Sea, including Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, retained its Hellenistic heritage throughout Roman rule. Latin as a vernacular never took root there - the Romans who were sent there as soldiers or administrators spoke it amongst themselves, but for the locals Greek remained the lingua franca (which educated Romans were expected to know anyway). With that in mind, I don’t see why the Roman administrators would not, pragmatically, permit the use of local dating systems in the provinces instead of forcing the Roman consular years upon the peoples of these territories. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/72 "2022-06-15T18:10:31Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > a year zero between PC (prior to COVID) and WC (with COVID) Or how about PC (pre-COVID) and PC (post-COVID). ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/73 "2022-06-15T18:20:04Z")
That’s just mean! I _like_ that in a man! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/74 "2022-06-15T18:27:24Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I regularly don’t “instantly” remember my age in years and have to think for a second, but I also don’t make a big to-do about my birthday and never have. I think in lots of pre-modern societies (and even some modern ones), people are a little more in tune with some of these things–maybe not the specific birth _day_, but the knowledge that you’ve crossed through another year (I think in some cultures people increment their conception of how “old” they are, with the New Year, not with the specific anniversary of their birth date, and that probably comes from such a tradition in the past of mostly tracking your annual cycles through life.) Or they just don’t care precisely how old they are, once they’re into adulthood. You hear a lot of stories from less-modernized parts of the world about someone estimating their age to be about 80, or the like. And it shows how spoiled we modern folks are, if we think that covid is such a significant event that it’s worth restarting the calendar over. There have been plenty of other pandemics in the past two thousand years that were a much bigger deal, such as the flu pandemic of 1919, or the measles pandemic that ended in the 1960s. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/75 "2022-06-15T18:48:25Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > ch educated Romans were expected to know anyway). With that in mind, I don’t see why the Roman administrators would not, pragmatically, permit the use of local dating systems in the provinces instead of forcing the Roman consular years upon the peoples of these territories. I don’t think they WOULD care what the provincials do, but I also don’t see them taking great pains to ensure that the provincials have an easy time understanding Roman dates. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/76 "2022-06-15T18:54:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And it shows how spoiled we modern folks are, if we think that covid is such a significant event that it’s worth restarting the calendar over. In case it wasn’t clear, I don’t actually think COVID is worth restarting our calendar over. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/77 "2022-06-15T19:19:00Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Those who are not religious or who otherwise don’t assume the divinity of Jesus use Before the Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Do those people also change the names of the days of the week? Thursday=Thor, etc. Or are ancient pagan religions = Cool, which the Christian one= Bad? I mean AUC is just as bad or good. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > And of course even if one _were_ religious–it is now broadly recognized that the actual birth year of Jesus almost certainly isn’t synced up with the BC/AD transition, I think the consensus is if historical Jesus existed he would’ve been born around 6 BCE. Some modern scholars are starting to think differently. The Herod question is not a simple one. Probably will never be 100% settled. > [@dolphinboy](#): > > If you’re not Christian, like me, it’s just an arbitrary agreed-to start of our modern dating scheme. Regardless, it’s still far simpler than what the Romans used was my only point. Yeah, just ignore the literal meaning of BC and AD and get on with life. Even the naval observatory still talks about “sunrise and sunset” although those are outdated terms before we knew the Sun didn’t go around the Earth. > [@Schnitte](#): > > But I think when we refer to more extended periods, things like “the Reagan years” (for the 1980s) or “the late Victorian era” (for the late 19th century) are not uncommon, and people assume that readers or listeners know which time is being referred to. Yeah, watching Escape to the Country, it is always “Georgian”, “Victorian” and sometimes “Regency”. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/78 "2022-06-15T19:36:17Z")
1. Re “modern examples,” eg Covid dating, as mentioned above [I forgot how to do selective quotes, and as usual can’t find the damn SDMB help pages–any help?] the greatest ever, I would imagine, was the Y2K Happening, which pitted the majority of celebrants in 2000 vs the the know-it-alls who said the millenial event should be in 2001. 2. Just recently, by coincidence, I had a heated debate with my friend (a Classics scholar, as it happens) that _by the plain meaning of the words_ “BC”/before Christ and its non-equivalent but accepted “A[fter]C” (AD leads to the “year of the reign of” path) demands a year 0. Given: only unit numbering is allowed. In a numbering system in which negative units are allowed, and 0 a member of the series, the numeric distance between -1 and +1 is two. When 0 is not a paying member (ie our dating system) it is 1. Aalso true, overlaid on this system, is that the defining unit time spans of Christianity are symboliccally determined (33 years of life, 3 days of before Ascension, 3 hours of Transfiguration). To the faithful Christ appeared and there was no longer a “before Him.” A simple challenge is then “well, either he died when he was 33 or one of those years was not like the others” (ie, in our BC/AC). Although I stuck to my guns that today the plain meaning of BC/AD is simply ignored, given the “fixed” timing of events, I responded as well with a devil’s argument: “the time of Birth was no different than what many nowadays call a singularity, in the spiritual space-time: zero-hour, fair and square.” An addition to the historical citations of “doing the math” by a faithful Christian for a Christian audience: Dante himsel, as the character within the Divine Comedy itself, dates his journey with Vergil by stating it took place in x years since the since the Crucifixion. It comes out to 1300, on Good Friday (the night before that event), and demands a year 0; he knew how to add, but he needed 1300 and Crucifixion at 33 years and the symbolism of the date of his journey to match. 1. There have to be mathematicians who deal with this problem formally as a rudimentary exercise in number theory. I would love to hear their simple wham-bam formal summation of this issue. Anyone know it? 1. Holy Cow @LSLGuy is back! PS: I have no idea how those indents came. Something to do with my numbering no doubt stupidly auto-formatted as a “help” by software, no doubt. Don’t see how to undo it. See above bleg for help in formatting. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/79 "2022-06-15T20:08:38Z")
@Leo_Bloom: To selectively quote, highlight the portion of the post you wish to quote, then wait a moment and a [quote] button will appear nearby. Click that. You can do that repeatedly from the same source post or in multiple people’s posts. All the chunks you quote will appear in one new post by you. See PM for more about me. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2022, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146/80 "2022-06-15T20:51:18Z")
I’m not clear precisely what problem you’re describing, but off-by-one problems are fairly common in math, and even more so in computer science. Which leads to things like C programmers and Fortran programmers disagreeing on whether array indices start at 0 or 1: There are arguments to number them either way (but the arguments for the C style of starting with 0 are better). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-year-dating-question/966146.md?page=5)