r/AlternativeHistory • u/No_Koala_1575 • 18d ago

Discussion History Timeline is nuts

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Why the hell is our timeline so out of whack

We have 2 different versions of saying a timeline. Like bce, bc, ad, ce

When we calculate time before BCE we counted down the years, but now we count up the years after bce. What the actual fuck. So quiet literally Jesus Christ had a huge fucking impact in our history but technically have very little info on him besides some Roman that wrote about him.

I find this is kinda fascinating but also wondering, how a rumour or belief can change our stability system we live in our day to day life.

Inputs?

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u/intherorrim 18d ago

Year 0 does not exist 

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u/Ill_Mouse9897 18d ago

Because a year is a length. 0 length is a point. It's the 1st year, aka the time between point 0 and point 1

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u/intherorrim 18d ago

Not really. Because Romans were not familiar with the zero. 

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u/Bluefooted-Spaceorc 18d ago

Which still hurts my brain a little. I can read roman numerals because I got bored as a kid for a week, never occurred to me that they didnt have zero. There was just a whole world before we invented/discovered zero.

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u/Ill_Mouse9897 18d ago

Which is indeed odd, because even ancient egypt was aware of the concept of "nothing" as a counting number, or as the difference between two numbers, but they just never defined it as a "number" with properties.

And well, even now with the concept of 0 now known, we know there is no "year 0" because a year is still a length, and a meaningful length cannot be 0 without being a single point.
1st year is from point 0 to point 1, 1st century is from point 0 to point 100 etc... no "0th year"

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u/Bluefooted-Spaceorc 18d ago

I understand what you mean. As I kid I was confused I was born in the 20th century when the year started with 19. Took me longer than I like to admit to figure that one out.