If you lived in the years we denote as B.C., would you have a measure of what year it is? I know the Jews have such a system, but did other civilizations or cultures have a measure of years? And, who decided the birth of Christ would be a measure of time? The first Pope, perhaps??? - Jinx
The Great and Powerful Cecil speaks.
Heck, every culture that had writing (and some that didn’t) had a calendar of some sort, though the Mayan one will run out in 2012 which according to some people will doom us all.
Many ancient cultures measured years based on the reigning king/emperor. So you could have “Year 14 of the Reign of King Og” or some such. I know that Japan still uses the reign of the current emperor for the “traditional” version of measuring years, but they also use the Gregorian calendar.
As for who decided to start measuring time starting with Christ’s birth, it was the papacy, at around 700 CE,
Cite.
The Roman Empire was based on a calendar that started, IIRC, about 753 (when Romulus was reputed to have built Rome) and they used that. Claudius, for example, held a games to celebrate the 800th year of Rome.