The same could be said of any integer on a real number line, including 2006. As OldGuy says, the main reason for the absence of a year 0 in our calendar is that Europeans weren’t yet familiar with the concept of zero.
For what it’s worth, astronomers often “shift” the BC years — so that 1 BC is 0, 2 BC is –1, and so on — when they’re calculating the times of past events. For obvious reasons such a system is easier to compute with.
The Japanese calender starts January 1st and ends December 31st, but they count their years based on the Emperor’s accession.
FWIW, t-bonham, not just Orhtodox Jews, but all Jews recognize this as the year 5766.
Every real number is a single point. We’re dealing with integers here and the integer that comes between +1 and -1 is zero. We could of course go with any convention we wanted to – like skip every number divisible by 7. The disadvantage of skipping zero is noting that while Dec 25, 17 AD is 8 ( = 17-9) years after Dec 25, 9 AD, it is twenty not 21 (= 17- (-4)) years after December 25 4 B.C.
I think you’re missing the point here. It’s not about counting integers in a strict mathematical sense. It’s about accounting for time according to human nature, and referencing a significant event.
A year isn’t a single point. It covers a span which can be measured in days, weeks, minutes, etc. When we talk about 1 A.D. or 2006 A.D., we’re not describing a point in time, rather we’re labeling a defined span of time. The notion of integers is not applicable.
I can talk about what happened during the first year of my marriage, or the second year of my marriage. I can talk about the year prior to my wedding, and the year before that. No one is going to think of any of those years as the “zeroeth” year.
To put it another way, the year 1 A.D. is the span between the 0 point and the +1 point. The year 2 is the span between the +1 point and the +2 point. The year 1 B.C. is the span between the 0 point and the -1 point. Etc. Having a year zero does not fit in here.
In a mathematical system, something that happened between the 1 point and the 2 point would have a value of 1.x, but in natural human reckoning it’s going to be described as happening during the 2nd year.
You’re not mistaken at all - at least, that’s absolutely correct in India. Apart from traditional festivals (some of which are tied to the lunar calendar), I’ve never seen the old calendar system being used. It’s Gregorian all the way - birthdays, official holidays, casual conversation, everything.
Re: year numbering, certainly when I visited Thailand the Buddhist Era (BE) year number seemed to be used far more commonly than the Gregorian year. The months and days are the same, but there is a 543 year offset, making this year 2549. Newspapers, bus tickets, till receipts etc, even in a modern business context, mostly seem to be dated like that, though I did see a few using the western-style date.
(That calendar counts from the year of death of the Buddha, I believe).
Well I can buy the argument that “human nature” would prefer to avoid a year zero, even if zero were a well known number otherwise. In a calendar to be used by everybody, maybe “zerolessness” is a good design feature. (Either that, or you put your year 1 so far back in the past that no known historical event takes place before it — kind of like the Hebrew calendar does.)
But I think the question is moot since the number zero was in fact unknown at the time and place the Julian/Gregorian calendar was established, therefore the designers couldn’t have included such a year. The choice was simply unavailable to them. So that ends up being the primary reason our calendar doesn’t have a year zero, even if it’s not the only reason.
With regards the absence of Year O, there are two separate issues.
The argument that there was no Year O because the number zero was itself unknown clearly is true for the original introduction of AD dating.
But, as Exapno Mapcase has already pointed out, BC dating was only introduced much later, by Denis Pétau (a.k.a. Dionysius Petavius) in his 1627 work, De doctrina temporum. And by then the number zero was well-known in the West, as were (more controversially) negative numbers. So Pétau could have inserted a Year 0 had he wanted to.
Of course, Pétau might have been reluctant to do so if he thought that Jesus had been born in AD 1. But he probably didn’t actually think that, because, like Kepler (although he didn’t specifically cite him), he dated the death of Herod to 4 BC. Sneakily, he only quoted that date in Julian years and so glossed over the discrepancy. Or at least that’s how it’s given in the English translation of his work.