Ancient calendars
Archeology cannot pinpoint exactly when an event occurred. She gives only an approximate date. The exact dates are given to historians only by written sources, and even then 
Not all. How to be? They help calendars and chronology
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Stone calendar of American Indians
Chronology is the measurement of time. We measure length in meters, weight in kilograms. Time can be measured in days from one morning to the next. Ancient people noticed that summer came at regular intervals, and began to count the years from summer to summer. We calculated how many days pass from summer to summer. It turned out that 365 days. This is what they called “summer”. Even now we will not say: “I am twelve years old,” but we will say: “I am twelve years old.” The word "year" appeared later. At the beginning of the year, New Year's holidays were usually held. Some peoples celebrated the New Year in the fall, while others celebrated it in the spring or winter.
When people came up with letters and numbers, they decided to write calendar . It was necessary to select some important event in the past and count the years from it.
1.
2.
1. The calendar of our Slavic ancestors drawn on a jug 2. A calendar built in ancient times from stone (England)
The year when such an event occurred was agreed to be considered the first year. The following years were called the second, third, and so on.
Attention: an additional task for the most hardworking, inquisitive and quick-witted: try to explain why these drawings are placed here . If you answer the question, perhaps the teacher will give you not one, but two A's!
But in different countries they counted time from different events.
This was very inconvenient, because the calendars of different countries and peoples did not coincide. For example, when the inhabitants of Italy and Greece meant the same year, they called it differently.
The ruler of the ancient Roman state, Julius Caesar, introduced the modern calendar. Ancient image
In Greece they could say: “We are in the third year of the twenty-ninth Olympiad,” and in Italy they said: “This is the ninety-sixth year from the founding of Rome.” There was confusion. A single calendar for the whole world was needed.
Modern calendar
A faith appeared on Earth, which is called
Christian
. Christian legends say that God once lived under the guise of a man.
Jesus Christ
. Scientists believe that Christ did not exist at all, and the stories about him are made up. But many people pray to Christ even today. One Christian priest managed to “calculate the date of birth” of Christ. And Christians began to count years “from the year of birth” of their god. Gradually, this counting of years became stronger in most countries of the world. Emperor Peter the Great introduced such a calendar in our country.
Of course, educated people do not believe the stories about Christ. And the calendar turned out to be complicated and not very successful. But they continue to use the calendar because different countries have become accustomed to it. When Russians write that Tsar Peter the Great died in 1725, this is understandable to an American, a Pole, or a Brazilian, because these countries have the same calendars.
Remember: in the modern calendar, the time from the first year to the present day is called our era, or new era (abbreviated AD). And the time from ancient times to the first year of our era is called time before our era (BC).
One hundred years is called a century, and ten centuries a millennium. Two millennia, twenty centuries have passed since the beginning of our era, and on January 1, 2001, the twenty-first century began.
Counting the years BC
How to count years BC? First of all, note that the years are numbered in reverse order. That is, it used to be 59 BC. e., after it - 58 BC. e., then - 57 BC. e. and so on. The larger the date, the older it is and the further from our time.
A schoolchild in 2000 counts how many years ago some event occurred. Let's say something happened in 104 BC. e. This means that 2000 years AD and another 104 years BC have passed since then. The total is 2000 years + 104 years = 2104 years ago.
Counting years is not at all difficult. It is only important to understand the rules of counting and practice properly. The “Time Line” table will help you with this, don’t forget about it!
In the spring, we discussed with Nikolai Nikolaevich Lisov the problem of the “zero year” I proposed - between 1 BC and 1 AD. I mainly referred to the Gospels, according to which a miraculous non-sexual conception occurred in the Virgin Mary on the day of the vernal equinox, and Christmas, accordingly, fell on the day of the winter solstice. And John the Baptist was conceived by the elderly couple Zechariah and Elizabeth six months before the conception of Jesus Christ (Gospel of Luke 1) -
26. In the sixth month /of Elizabeth’s pregnancy/ the angel Gabriel was sent from God to the city of Galilee, called Nazareth,
27. to a virgin betrothed to a husband named Joseph; the name of the Virgin: Mary...
30. And the Angel said to Her: Do not be afraid, Mary, for You have found favor with God;
31. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a Son, and you will call His name Jesus...
34. Mary said to the Angel: How will this be when I don’t know my husband?
35. The angel answered Her: The Holy Spirit will come upon You, and the power of the Most High will overshadow You; therefore the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.
36. Behold your relative Elizabeth, who is called barren, and she conceived a son in her hundred years, and she is already in her sixth month,
37. for with God no word will remain powerless / not a single line of the bootstrap Arch-Program /...
57. The time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she gave birth to a son.
58. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had magnified His mercy over her, and they rejoiced with her.
59. On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child and wanted to name him, after his father’s name, Zechariah.
60. To this his mother said: no, but call him John...
67. And Zechariah his father was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying:
68. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, that he hath visited his people, and brought deliverance unto them,
69. And He raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David,
70. As He declared through the mouth of His holy prophets who have been since the beginning...
76. And you, little child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will come before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,
77. to make His people understand His salvation in the forgiveness of their sins,
78. by the gracious mercy of our God, through which the East from above visited us /“East from above” reveals the secret of our East, where we, Russians, come from/,
79. to enlighten those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet on the path of peace.
Thus, the Holy Scripture clearly indicates the special nature of the year in which the intervention of the “East from above” in earthly affairs took place. There are also purely chronological considerations that make it possible to painlessly introduce “year zero” for established and documented historical dating. This almost virtual “year zero” can not only be entered, but also, for convenience, transferred to any chronological interval, but best of all – between 1 BC. and to us the so familiar 1st year from the Nativity of Christ. In fact, of course, Jesus Christ was born earlier than 1 year AD and 1 year BC, for he was crucified on the Cross of Calvary at the age of about 45 years (“The Jews said to Him: You are not yet fifty years old” - Gospel of John 8 :57). In general, the Holy Scripture has not yet been read sensibly, much less its highest meaning has been comprehended, but the sacred-virtual “year zero” is not only permissible, but imperative.
For without a “zero year” there is confusion with the date of birth of Jesus Christ - nonsense and even an oxymoron if he was born “December 25, 1st year after the birth of Christ,” and it is not very clumsy to begin the chronology of our era from the day of his birth, if this day falls on “December 25, 1st year before Christ.” Then it turns out that the first decade of our era and all subsequent centuries and millennia begin with the year at “1”, and not at “0”. And the first decade is from year 1 to year 10, and our third millennium began not with the advent of the New Year 2000, but on the night of December 31, 2000 to January 1, 2001. And if Jesus Christ was born “December 25, 0 year” - everything is in order, and you can classify decades, centuries and millennia as we are used to - the nineties from 1990 to 1999 inclusive, the twentieth century from 1900 to 1999 inclusive, the second millennium in the year 1000 to 1999, the third millennium from the first day of the year 2000 onwards until the last day of the year 2999.
And Nikolai Nikolaevich Lisovoy, together with the Orthodox church hierarchs, calculated the Bimillennium since the birth of Jesus Christ in such a cunning way that it fell on January 7, 2001, and accordingly, the heads of the Orthodox churches and all sorts of high-ranking officials from Orthodox countries gathered in Nazareth and celebrated this date among themselves , which naturally caused bewilderment among sensible people.
Now the daily dictionary entry from the Oxford English Dictionary about the word “nineties” has arrived by email, and it clearly says - /attrib./ Of, relating to, or characteristic of the years from ninety to ninety- nine inclusive in a particular century (esp. the nineteenth or twentieth) (http://www.oed.com/cgi/display/wotd). That is, “nineties” - from “ninety years” to “ninety-nine years”. As we see, decades, centuries and millennia are counted from 0 to 9, and not from 1 to 10. And therefore, the introduction of a “zero year” not only streamlines and makes church chronology meaningful, but also removes the currently existing and simply blatant chronological contradiction in the calculation of decades , centuries and millennia.
People have always wanted to remember their past. With the advent of writing, the need arose to keep time.
The very first and natural unit of measurement was the earth's day. Observation of the Moon helped to establish that one lunar phase lasts on average 30 days. And after 12 lunar phases, the repetition of the first begins. Calendars based on observation of the Moon appeared among many nationalities and, although they were inaccurate, they made it possible to keep track of years.
It remained to understand from what point to start counting. Most often, some important event in the era of the people was taken as the beginning of chronology. Such intervals became known as eras. For example, the beginning of the reign of a new leader (the Seleucid era - among the inhabitants of the Seleucid state with the accession of Seleucus to the throne), the founding of a new city (the era from the founding of Rome - among the Romans) or simply a significant event (the era from the first Olympic Games - among the Greeks).
Another method of chronology was the sequence of events. It can be represented as follows: ruler X ascended the throne 3 years after the wheat crop failed; 5 years after the start of the reign of X, the state was raided by barbarians, etc.
Almost every state had its own calendar. With the development of trade and science in Europe, the need arose to create a unified calendar for Christian countries. In 525, the Roman abbot Dionysius the Lesser proposed a new system of chronology from the Nativity of Christ. At first, the abbot's ideas were not popular, and each country continued to maintain chronology in its own way, but centuries later, at the end of the 10th century, many European countries began to switch to the calendar proposed by Dionysius. Now any date began to be written with a postscript “from the Nativity of Christ” or “from R.H.). The final ordering of the calendar occurred during the Renaissance, when the term “before the Nativity of Christ” was introduced. This greatly simplified and systematized the chronology of world events. Already closer to the 20th century, the religious phrase “from the Nativity of Christ” was replaced by the phrase “AD” and chronology acquired a modern version.
It turns out that modern humanity reckons by era, that is, it uses the same methods that our distant ancestors used. Only now we have a more accurate astronomical calendar, and the starting point for chronology is the same for all countries.
This is interesting: in Russia, the transition to the chronology “from A.D.” happened by historical standards quite recently - in 1700 by decree of PeterI. Before this, the chronology of events was carried out according to the Constantinople era, which began its countdown from 5509 BC. It turns out that according to the Old Believer calendar now (for 2015) the year is 7524. According to the results of the latest population census, 400,000 people are Old Believers in Russia.
Several years ago, the world press discussed in every possible way the question of which year should begin counting the third millennium: from 2000 or from 2001. But all this talk is not worth a damn - we have been living in the third millennium for several years now. If you count from the Nativity of Christ, of course.
We will not talk about the famous ancient Greek historian and rhetorician Dionysius, but about his namesake - a Vatican monk who lived in the 6th century AD. In 525, Pope John I entrusted him with the development of a new calendar. The executive clergyman took up the matter with particular zeal. And I must say, I found a very good move: to consider the beginning of our era from the birth of Jesus, which earned the approval of the Catholic hierarchs.
He began his work with attempts to clarify the date of Christ's birth. To do this, I used the Gospel of Luke and, based on the data contained in its text, calculated that this happened in 754 according to the Roman calendar. But it turned out that Luke, while describing in detail the events of the life of Christ, neglected chronology in some ways. And Dionysius, knowing the Bible almost by heart, was not very strong in ordinary chronicle history. Years have passed. The new calendar spread throughout the Christian world. And finally it turned out that the diligent Dionysius was mistaken by several years: the historical event in Bethlehem occurred earlier than he read from Luke.
Jesus was born during the reign of Herod. And Herod (and this is a historical fact that cannot be doubted) died in 4 BC. Moreover, the gospel data and information gleaned from other books of the Bible move the date of Christ’s birth to an even earlier date. Take, for example, this biblical text. It says that Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary fled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to avoid being included in the census. Matthew and Luke testify to this. Official history speaks of two population censuses in Judea. One of them was carried out in 6 and 7 AD, that is, after the birth of Christ, and therefore cannot be taken into account. The other was conducted by Senecius Santurinus in the period from 8 to 6 BC. So this is when Jesus was born? Probably yes. But this cannot be said with certainty.
Star of Bethlehem. In the Bible she is just a star - that's all. But what kind of celestial body was this really? American scientist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke suggested in one of his stories that it was a Supernova explosion. But hardly. If this were so, the outbreak would certainly have been recorded by astronomers in China, Greece and Rome, where, unlike Judea, observing the starry sky had centuries-old traditions. Then what? Astronomers of the relatively recent past and modern scientists put forward several versions.
In the 17th century, the great Johannes Kepler calculated that in 7 BC. There was a conjunction (approach on the celestial sphere) of the two largest planets of the solar system - Jupiter and Saturn. The result was a “luminary” that was brighter than Sirius. In this century, the Englishman David Hough checked Kepler's calculations, and they were confirmed. Moreover, it turned out that in 7 BC. conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occurred three times: in May, September and December. In addition, in 7 BC. there was also a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, which gave an even brighter luminous point, and a year later there was a triple conjunction: Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. The star of Bethlehem could also be a comet. The Gospel of Matthew says that a star “went before them.” The “conjoined” planets stand at the same point in the celestial sphere. But comets move across the sky. In the period preceding the death of Herod, two comets appeared in the sky - in 5 and 4 BC. The second one must be excluded from the calculations. She was too weak and, moreover, appeared shortly before the king’s death, when he was very ill and was not interested in babies. Yes, and the first comet raises doubts. It was brighter, shaped like a broom and shone for 70 days. But, judging by the official chronicles, she did not leave much of an impression. The famous Halley's Comet remains. By the way, it was she who was depicted in 1303 by the Italian Giotto in the fresco “The Adoration of the Three Magi.” And Halley's comet appeared in the sky in the year 12 before the beginning of a new era. This is closer to the truth. And it is confirmed by the Gospel of John, which Dionysius did not bother to study when preparing the calendar. In it, the Jews say to Jesus: “You are not yet fifty years old, but have you seen Abraham?” Well, who, tell me, would address a 30-year-old guy like that? More likely, a 40-year-old man.
It turns out that Jesus was born in 12 BC. Everything fits here. And the star of Bethlehem shone, moving across the sky, and King Herod was in the prime of his life and was conducting a census. And from this it follows that we have been living in the third millennium for several years now. If, of course, we count from the Nativity of Christ.
To the question AFTER WHAT YEAR DID OUR ERA BEGIN??? given by the author Crooked the best answer is our era after the birth of Christ, that is, from the 1st year. 1193 BC, this means before the birth of Christ, that is, 2011+1193=3204 years ago.
Answer from Mikhail Nikitin[guru]
zero) and before it -1. Don't you teach math at school?
Answer from Oversleep[guru]
the era of enlightenment began with the first!
Answer from KUS[guru]
there was no zero year! because obviously zero is a mathematical convention. There is 1st year AD. e. , and before it the 1st year BC. e.
PS: okay, I’ll express it in your language: RAM, BC years are counted in the opposite direction: 2nd year AD. e. , 1st year AD e, 1st year BC. e. , 2nd year BC uh,. I don’t know how to make RAM even more stupid for you
Answer from Neurologist[guru]
It is customary to count from the birth of Christ, and so, of course, much earlier
Answer from David Shabashov[newbie]
I don’t know exactly after what year it began. uh, but I know for sure that 8112 BC. e. was
Answer from DANILA QUEEN[newbie]
from 20-21
Answer from Larisa zhirnova[active]
Since 0001 AD
Answer from Qwerty qwert[newbie]
People who lived before our era lived with a countdown?))
Answer from Boris Baratov[active]
The use of AD in chronology became widespread after the use of the Venerable Bede, starting in 731. Gradually, all countries of Western Europe switched to this calendar. The last in the West, on August 22, 1422, to switch to the new calendar was Portugal (from the Spanish era).
In Russia, the last day of the Constantinople era was December 31, 7208 from the creation of the world; By decree of Peter I, the next day was officially counted according to the new calendar from the “Nativity of Christ” - January 1, 1700.
Answer from Anna Kovaleva[active]
Our era appeared in 124 AD. e until 97 AD uh
Answer from Vovchik[newbie]
The chronology from the Nativity of Christ was introduced in 525 by the abbot of one of the Roman monasteries, Dionysius the Small.
Answer from Tatyana Mikheeva[newbie]
Our era began in 1193
Answer from Victor Vysotsky[newbie]
7525 thousand years ago the counting of years began. Jesus Christ was born, as I calculated from my own mathematics, in 5508. but in 7208 Peter 1 and blah blah blah in short said that the count will be from the Nativity of Christ. Therefore, the year 7208 turned into 1700 and this is in Rus'. the rest of the countries, as I read history, began counting the years from the Nativity of Christ much earlier! But I don’t know at what end of this era to count. either from Christmas or from the first year. Of course it’s more interesting from the first year. so you start to believe in people more.. otherwise if everything is closer to Christmas it will be boring... and the further from Christmas the more pleasant it is that the people in those years were so smart and did such things.. that after 7525 years we see them on TV We're happy to watch! how they made history!
Answer from Valery Pronichev[newbie]
the last year BC was 3761 this year was taken as 0 then went 1
Answer from Vitalik kartuzov[newbie]
Hmm, there are so many pseudo-clever people who don’t understand what they want, but still answer obviously and uselessly, while insulting and making others look stupid.
Dude, I understand you, the birth of Christ is the first and only reason for the beginning of a new era, so the new era interrupted 10,000 years of the old one (this is not an exact number, we will never know the exact one)
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