# The years before Christ **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 29, 2003, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993 "2003-04-29T20:38:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/21 "2003-04-30T14:22:15Z")
Well… For most things relevant to a preindustrial population, your clan or village elders would keep count, probably with the help of the local priesthood. People paid attention back then. And at a local level, thay could focus that attention on what impacted them directly. “Long count” calendars were really for the priests/rabbis/imams/magi/court astrologers/court genealogists for such things as computing ritual calendars, predicting eclipses, verifying dynastic legitimacy, etc. As to the efficiency of dynastic calendrics, if you go all the way back to 1789, Britain has to keep track of only 9 kings/queens, the Catholic Church of 15 Popes, Japan of 7 emperors (as opposed to the US’s 43 presidents and 107 or however many Congresses). So dynastic dating’s not that hard to keep track of, specially if your culture has writing, or just a well-developed structure for preserving and handing down oral tradition. For most of human history, keeping accurate track of things happening beyond one century in the past is really only of interest for the tiniest of scholarly elites. But for generic keeping-track of such things as long-term land deeds, Jubilee Years, etc., the local temple/church and royal tax agent/judge would have scribes and clerks keeping a record of what happened when – “the year with both a big flood AND a barbarian sacking in the Spring was the 5th of King Balkir the Blowhard”; “Balkir the Blowhard was crowned on a Jubilee Year, which was also leap” --, who could look it up. It’s not like you had a Social Security Administration trying to keep track of when 280 million people will/did turn 65. As mentioned before, the Romans had the consular count -plus- the AUC count. In the Middle East after the time of Alexander they would use the local dynastic year plus, if pressed, a “Hellenistic age” count from the time of Alexander. Mayans had a 2-stage cyclical calendar that repeats itself every 260 or 400 (am not gonna look it up now)years, within which every date was unique, and on top of that had a “long count” cycle with its last “0.0.0.0” sometime absurdly in the past, and the next one around our year 2012. Notice that every “long count” calendar is either set far in the legendary past (Jewish), to a specific historic event the culture defines as its key foundational moment (Islamic) or a combination of the two (Roman). A lot of civilizations really did not care what had happened before they showed up. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/22 "2003-04-30T15:27:31Z")
Nope. They did use “BC” back in the old-timey days, and I have the proof. I purchased several coins from the Roman Empire dating between 200 BC and 100 BC, which is clearly marked. (Heh. The guy I bought them from wanted several hundred bucks a piece–but I talked him down to several hundred for the whole lot!) ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/23 "2003-04-30T15:52:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Philster \* > \*\*No one kept time until the railroads were running a little over a century ago, so no big surprise that the calendar was not a big concern a few thousand years ago. > > Chew on that, Trags63. \*\* Of course they kept time. Although it sure woulda been convenient “I’ve decided we should start keeping time.” “Great! Now we have something to do with these clocks we’ve been perfecting for centuries!” They kept local time, though. Noon was the point at which the sun was highest in whatever town you were in. Railroads prompted the establishment of time _zones_. ---
**Author:** ![NutMagnet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea5d25/32.png) [@NutMagnet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NutMagnet)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/24 "2003-04-30T17:25:58Z")
… which reminds me … Abhou ben Abhou was in the marketplace one day and happened to let a huge fart. Everyone turned to look. He was so mortified, he ran home, packed his belongings and went out to live in the desert. Many years passed. He was now an old man. He decided to return to the village. Surely people had forgotten by now. As he wandered through the village, he marvelled at all the changes that had taken place. Even the road was paved. He wondered aloud as to when the road had been done. A stranger turned to him and said, “It was 12 years, three months and six days after Abhou ben Abhou farted in the marketplace.” ---
**Author:** ![dwc1970](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@dwc1970](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwc1970)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/25 "2003-04-30T19:12:48Z")
So, since it seems that there are so many different calendar systems in use today, do computers uesed in these places have calendars set to conform to their own system, or is the Gregorian calendar accepted as a worldwide standard? If it’s not, does this mean all these places will have their own versions of Y2K to deal with? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/26 "2003-05-01T03:35:24Z")
Well, for the modern computer to follow any calendar is really no big thing: you just program the appropriate calendric rules into it and set the start-point data, while software takes care of making it look “right” onscreen – fortunately the civil day of 24 hours of 3600 seconds each IS standard. CE/Gregorian is a common default calendar for trade and technology, though, and many countries use CE/Gregorian as a simultaneous calendar with their traditional, or make it their civil calendar (PRoChina) with the traditional calendar for “folk” use. Or as in Japan, use Gregorian as the calendrics but do not use CE for numbering years. IIRC some Japanese businesses encountered relatively minor though embarassing hindrances in 1989 when some programs were discovered to be deficient or lacking in provisions for adding the necessary Showa-Heisei conversion function (obviously, they could not preprogram Heisei itself) ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2003, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/27 "2003-05-01T03:41:42Z")
BTW, here’s a lot of interesting reading about calendars: [http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/calendar24.pdf](http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/calendar24.pdf) Although I’ll admit “interesting” varies greatly from person to another. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2003, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/28 "2003-05-01T03:44:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Haj wrote: > The smallest year number award goes to Taiwan. In Taiwan it is currently the year 92. The start the counting from the 1911 revolution. I don’t think so. Ask a Japanese what year it is and they will say 15 or 16. I think the latest Emporer came to the thrown in early May, so it may soon be 16. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2003, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/29 "2003-05-01T06:27:43Z")
Go to a catholic midnight Mass some year and listen to the readings. You’ll hear a lengthy listing of ‘what year Jesus was born’ in a whole bunch of different calendar systems. Including both non-historical ones (‘4,xxx years after the great flood’, ‘x thousand years after Moses led the Jews out of Egypt’), ‘consular’ ones (‘when x was legate(?) of Judea’, ‘in the reign of Caesar Agustus’) and some semi-historical ones (‘in the 767th year from the founding of Rome’). Always seems rather interesting to me. Of course, most of them trace back to some event that is at best only semi-historical, but that hardly matters. As long as we all agree that, for example, Rome was founded 767 years ago, that works fine for counting the years. And aren’t we doing the same thing now? I understood most historians agree that Jesus (if not completely mythological) was actually born around 4-7 BC. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2003, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/30 "2003-05-01T14:18:43Z")
One technical nitpick: in a Mass or other Christian service, _“readings”_ refers to Biblical passages. Most of those figures are quotes from the writings of the Church Fathers that are included in the holiday service. The biblical ones that come to my mind readily, would be > [@](#): > > “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” (Luke 2:1,2 NIV) > > “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar–when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene-- during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.” (Luke 3:1,2 NIV) **John Mace** , as I understood it, the modern dynastic date is set to coincide with the duration of the civil year, which is Gregorian – so it would be Heisei 15 all the way to December. ---
**Author:** ![Summertime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Summertime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Summertime)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2003, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993/31 "2003-05-01T14:25:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by [t-bonham@scc.net](mailto:t-bonham@scc.net) \* > \*\* > > And aren’t we doing the same thing now? I understood most historians agree that Jesus (if not completely mythological) was actually born around 4-7 BC. \*\* I’ve heard one as precise as He was born September 8, 5 B.C. shortly before midnight. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-years-before-christ/171993.md?page=1)