this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Please explain my confused me like I'm 5 (0r 4 or 6).

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[–] governorkeagan@lemdro.id 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I’m no expert but I assume that the year Christ died would be “year zero” (assuming you’re talking about anno Domini (AD) and before Christ (BC)) since we started counting after that.

EDIT: reading more on the topic I might be completely incorrect with my above statement. If someone else knows, please do correct me

EDIT 2: I found this on Wikipedia which talks about a “year zero”

[–] platypode@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 years ago

It depends which calendar you use! Every calendar picks a basically arbitrary system to uniquely identify each year, and in some of them "year 0" doesn't refer to any year.

The Gregorian, for example, goes directly from 1 BC to 1 AD, since 1 BC is "the first year before Christ" and 1 AD is "the first in the years of our lord." This doesn't make much mathematical sense, but it's not like there was a year that didn't happen--they just called one year 1 BC, and the next year 1 AD.

ISO 8601 is based on the Gregorian calendar, but it includes a year 0. 1 BC is the same year as +0000; thus 2 BC is -0001, and all earlier years are likewise offset by 1 between the two calendars.

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

When you consider the time as a number line, years are not points at integers (which would in some way warrant a year 0), but rather periods between them. Year 1 is the period between 0 and 1, and before that was -1 to 0, or year -1. There is no year 0, because there isn't anything between 0 and 0

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This explanation is unclear to me. Why do we choose the later of the two endpoints of the year for (0, 1) but the earlier of the two for (-1, 0)?

[–] xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org -1 points 2 years ago

Because until the Middle Ages, Europeans were afraid of the number 0.