The Christian system of year numbering was invented in what we now know as AD 525 by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who had been asked by the pope to work out a better way to figure when Easter occurred. There was probably a simpler way of doing this than renumbering the entire calendar, but I guess Dionysius got a little carried away. Surprisingly, considering the distinguished nature of the honoree, it took a while before the Anno Domini (“in the year of the Lord”) method caught on. The popes didn’t use it routinely until the 10th century AD and the Greeks didn’t come around until the 14th century.
With this in mind, together with claims that there was no year zero therefore decades start with years that end with a one, I posit that there was no year 1 either. According to the excerpt above, no one ever walked around and said, “Hey, this is the year 1 on a new calendar that won’t exist for another 525 years!”
Based on this, I propose we tell all of the nit-picking nerds (I count myself as one.) what they can do with their “decades have to start with a one and end with a zero” mentality.
Henceforth, the Birren Doctrine proclaims the 1990s were all the years of the format 199#, the Twenty-first Century are all the years of the format 20##, etc.
The 1970’s were from 1 Jan 1970 to 31 Dec 1979, they’re “the nineties”, Saying they are from 1971 to 1980 is not even technically ot nitpcikingly rigth. The eighth decade of the 20th century certainly started on 1 Jan 1971 an ended on 31 Dec 1980. THose two concepts are closely related but not the same. “Cecil” is 100% wrong there.
I disagree on the centuries. It sucks that they don’t start in a ##00 format, but if the counting system begins at one and there being no zero, that’s how it is.
:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
You are disagreeing with DHBirren, right? 'Cause it kinda sounds like you’re disagreeing with Cecil, but you’re not.
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With DHB: agree on decades, disagree on centuries.
With “Cecil”: disagree on decades, agree on centuries.
What were they using prior to that, for instance, in what were otherwise the 1200s? Olympiads were long since over. Perhaps “the Xth year of the reign of Emperor Y”?
Since the current system didn’t come into existence until 525, the first decade would be 525-534, and the first century would be 525-624. If my math is correct, we should almost be finished with the 14th century. In a couple of years, Columbus will be sailing the ocean blue.
Now, with pure logic, we finally have something that everyone can agree with!
Cecil writes, “In Christ’s time the Romans numbered their years anno urbis conditae, from the founding of the city [of Rome].”
And so they did, but it wasn’t quite that straightforward. Romans themselves would often colloquially date by years of imperial reign, eg in the 15th year of the Emperor Tiberius, or consular appointment, for example, ‘in the year of the consuls L. Valerius Flaccus and M. Porcius Cato’ (BC195). Consular dating remained in use until the year AD 541 when Justinian abolished the annual appointment of consuls and the consular office itself.
Then, of course, the Jews in Palestine would have used either the Hebrew system of dating or dating by Seleucid era. Also dating by indiction cycles was still in common use in that time and region.
Thank goodness the end of the century is over (Either end. Both Ends) And I don’t have to put up with lame-ass assertions that “there was no year zero” is supposed to prove something. At least not that I’ll ever live to see.
So, was “1BC” the year just before “1AD” "? Its a date I’ve never heard referred to. Maybe that was a quiet year?
Funny story; In “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” there is a banquet (“arrange a sit-down orgy for 12”) going on and Pseudelous holds up a wine bottle and asks “Was 1 a good year?”
Maybe, if we’re forced to use years, but astronomers generally prefer to use Julian Days. That’s a continual count of days from a time far enough in the past that negative numbers are almost never needed.
Yes, but FORTRAN was designed to do it the way mathematicians do, while C was designed to do it the way computers do. And you’re gonna get fencepost problems either way. I wonder what Plankalkül did.
(For what it’s worth, the word “zeroth” first turns up in 1896.)
The number-line argument actually helps to *explain * why there’s no “year zero.”
Thing is, in a number line, zero is a point, not an interval. Years are intervals.
Remember that the original long-form of the Anno Domini system (as of the AUC, for that matter) is an ordinal number, not a cardinal number. That’s going to be important.
When you are talking about the first interval of anything (the first year in a baby’s life, the first year after a city’s foundation, the first kilometer in a marathon) it’s understood that it is the interval from the point of origin to the first landmark.
The first year in a baby’s life ends with the first birthday. The big party on December 31, 1999 marked the end of the 1999th year – so, a bit short of the two millenia mark.
It may seem a nitpicking distinction, but it isn’t. Claiming that the millenium ended at the end of 1999 is mathematically the same as claiming that the Indy 500 ends at the beginning of the 200th lap, instead of at the end of it.
Going back to the reason there is no “year 0”… the zero is the point of origin of a measurement. Not an interval. There’s no “year 0” in the calendar for the same reason freshmen are said to be in their “first year” of college and not in their “zeroth year.”