Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[miauw62]

The 2012 thing is like going "OMG year 2000 - end of the world!" and the date 1000's of years from now is like going "OMG year 9999 - we're out of digits - end of the world!".

I'd assume mankind would at least have the sense to just roll the year over to 10000. It's not like in year 99 everyone panicked because "We can't possibly count that high!" or anything like that. They just said it's year 100, cheers.

Alternatively, can you imagine the huge parties and everything that would happen at the end of 9999, seeing how 1999 jumping to 2000 was such a celebratory event?

Assuming of course by then we haven't nuked ourselves to oblivion over some petty issue and at least started space colonization.

I'm not sure if they already used that year count back then.

[Flying Dice]

The 2012 thing is like going "OMG year 2000 - end of the world!" and the date 1000's of years from now is like going "OMG year 9999 - we're out of digits - end of the world!".

I'd assume mankind would at least have the sense to just roll the year over to 10000. It's not like in year 99 everyone panicked because "We can't possibly count that high!" or anything like that. They just said it's year 100, cheers.

Alternatively, can you imagine the huge parties and everything that would happen at the end of 9999, seeing how 1999 jumping to 2000 was such a celebratory event?

Assuming of course by then we haven't nuked ourselves to oblivion over some petty issue and at least started space colonization.

I'm not sure if they already used that year count back then.

The Julian Calendar (the predecessor of the Gregorian Calendar) was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE and began use in 45 BCE (or 45 BC for you religious types, or 709 AUC [Ab urbe condita--"from the founding of the City {Rome}] for you ancient Roman types). It (perhaps retroactively) matches up with Gregorian (i.e. modern) datekeeping, though with some temporal issues which the Gregorian reform exists to correct.

The 'before christ' and 'anno domini' (and thus 'before common era' and 'common era') datekeeping was used in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars, so it could be assumed that in 99 CE they did indeed think that it was 99 AD.

[Mongol13524]

I thought dating by before Christ/anno domini didn't catch on until the 400's.

[Reelya]

The 2012 thing is like going "OMG year 2000 - end of the world!" and the date 1000's of years from now is like going "OMG year 9999 - we're out of digits - end of the world!".

I'd assume mankind would at least have the sense to just roll the year over to 10000. It's not like in year 99 everyone panicked because "We can't possibly count that high!" or anything like that. They just said it's year 100, cheers.

Alternatively, can you imagine the huge parties and everything that would happen at the end of 9999, seeing how 1999 jumping to 2000 was such a celebratory event?

Assuming of course by then we haven't nuked ourselves to oblivion over some petty issue and at least started space colonization.

In the year 100, they didn't do anything at all, because that was before Christianity was established as the official religion of the Roman Empire. They didn't know it was the year 100.

But they did have a total freakout in the year 1000.

[misko27]

The 2012 thing is like going "OMG year 2000 - end of the world!" and the date 1000's of years from now is like going "OMG year 9999 - we're out of digits - end of the world!".

I'd assume mankind would at least have the sense to just roll the year over to 10000. It's not like in year 99 everyone panicked because "We can't possibly count that high!" or anything like that. They just said it's year 100, cheers.

Alternatively, can you imagine the huge parties and everything that would happen at the end of 9999, seeing how 1999 jumping to 2000 was such a celebratory event?

Assuming of course by then we haven't nuked ourselves to oblivion over some petty issue and at least started space colonization.

In the year 100, they didn't do anything at all, because that was before Christianity was established as the official religion of the Roman Empire. They didn't know it was the year 100.

But they did have a total freakout in the year 1000.

There have been enough random apocalypses in recent years people should lnow better. Because, right now, I'm raptured to heavan watching earth be attacked by Y2k bug-ruled terminator droids, and I'd really like to focus on that.

[Reelya]

The 2012 thing is like going "OMG year 2000 - end of the world!" and the date 1000's of years from now is like going "OMG year 9999 - we're out of digits - end of the world!".

I'd assume mankind would at least have the sense to just roll the year over to 10000. It's not like in year 99 everyone panicked because "We can't possibly count that high!" or anything like that. They just said it's year 100, cheers.

Alternatively, can you imagine the huge parties and everything that would happen at the end of 9999, seeing how 1999 jumping to 2000 was such a celebratory event?

Assuming of course by then we haven't nuked ourselves to oblivion over some petty issue and at least started space colonization.

I'm not sure if they already used that year count back then.

The Julian Calendar (the predecessor of the Gregorian Calendar) was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE and began use in 45 BCE (or 45 BC for you religious types, or 709 AUC [Ab urbe condita--"from the founding of the City {Rome}] for you ancient Roman types). It (perhaps retroactively) matches up with Gregorian (i.e. modern) datekeeping, though with some temporal issues which the Gregorian reform exists to correct.

The 'before christ' and 'anno domini' (and thus 'before common era' and 'common era') datekeeping was used in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars, so it could be assumed that in 99 CE they did indeed think that it was 99 AD.

Dice, the Julian / Roman calender was introduced by Julius Caeser 45 years BEFORE the birth of christ. It was not dated from Christ's birth, because nobody heard of him yet, before he was born.

how were they supposed to know it was 45BC if Jesus hadn't been born yet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar

It says there, AD dating was first proposed in 525AD.

[Flying Dice]

I thought dating by before Christ/anno domini didn't catch on until the 400's.

It was first introduced in the early 500s, but didn't catch on until the 800s. But given that it is based on the same timekeeping as the Gregorian (and, generally) Julian calendars, it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to assume that yes, people in what we think of as 99 CE (who lived in an area where the Julian calendar was used) did indeed think that it was 99. At least in the context of a joking remark about stupidity and apocalyptic predictions, rather than detailed research.

[Reelya]

I thought dating by before Christ/anno domini didn't catch on until the 400's.

It was first introduced in the early 500s, but didn't catch on until the 800s. But given that it is based on the same timekeeping as the Gregorian (and, generally) Julian calendars, it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to assume that yes, people in what we think of as 99 CE (who lived in an area where the Julian calendar was used) did indeed think that it was 99. At least in the context of a joking remark about stupidity and apocalyptic predictions, rather than detailed research.

Well it is unreasonable in fact to assume that, because Christianity wasn't even close to the official religion in 100AD. They dated by Consul succession it says. And if they needed to compare how far apart 2 years were, they used the founding of Rome as the baseline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar

The principal method that the Romans used to identify a year for dating purposes was to name it after the two consuls who took office in it, so this eponymous or named year was called the consular year. Since 153 BC, they had taken office on 1 January, the start of the calendar year. The calendar year is the order that the months were displayed on stone tablets, which has been January to December since about 450 BC according to Ovid or since about 713 BC according to Macrobius and Plutarch (see Roman calendar). Julius Caesar did not change the beginning of either the consular year or the calendar year. In addition to consular years, the Romans sometimes used the regnal year of the emperor, and by the late 4th century documents were also being dated according to the 15-year cycle of the indiction. In 537, Justinian required that henceforth the date must include the name of the emperor and his regnal year, in addition to the indiction and the consul, while also allowing the use of local eras.

In 309 and 310, and from time to time thereafter, no consuls were appointed.[56] When this happened, the consular date was given a count of years since the last consul (so-called "post-consular" dating). After 541, only the reigning emperor held the consulate, typically for only one year in his reign, and so post-consular dating became the norm. Similar post-consular dates were also known in the West in the early 6th century. The system of consular dating, long obsolete, was formally abolished in the law code of Leo VI, issued in 888.

Only rarely did the Romans number the year from the founding of the city (of Rome), ab urbe condita (AUC). This method was used by Roman historians to determine the number of years from one event to another, not to date a year. Different historians had several different dates for the founding.

[Flying Dice]

The Gregorian calendar was a correction of the Julian calendar, which was introduced in 45 BCE to replace the old Roman calendar. Christians slapped the BC/AD labels onto the existing BCE/CE ones and arbitrarily labelled 1 CE as the birth of Christ, though most religious historians place his birth (if he actually existed) at somewhere between 7 and 4 BCE. So both the calendar system and the labelling/dating system existed before Christianity and in fact had nothing to do with it.


What you're talking about is the Roman calendar, which the Julian calendar was specifically designed to replace. If I'm recalling correctly, 1 CE corresponds to 755 AUC (though actual historical accounts indicate that this is off by something like two years).

[Reelya]

Julius Casaer specifically did not date the start year as "negative 45". That's just nonsense. The numbering was retroactive 500 years later.

The evidence is that Romans didn't have absolute numbering of years of any type, except to contrast the gap between years. The system used in the late Roman Empire was similar to the Japanese Imperial System where there are named Eras aligning with succession of the Emperor and numbered by the year of their reign.

[Flying Dice]

Yes, you're right. I was trying to make a small point about the silliness of worrying about what year it was for people in the year we label as 99 CE in the context of the original discussion. How foolish of me.

[Bohandas]

I'm an atheist, so for me, Christmas isn't really about remembering when Christ was born. besides, he was born on a different day, but the early Christians just dumped Christmas over an old pagan celebration, if I remember correctly.

Was it over any specific holiday though, or is it just that there has always been a self-sustaining critical mass of semi-undifferentiated holidays at the end of December, just like there is now, albeit with the specific holidays involved changing over the centuries? I'm beginning to believe that this is closer to the actual case, as it is still visibly going on with new holidays...

(side-note, as best as I can make out the continued existence of Kwanzaa owes itself to essentially the same gambit; piggybacking off the popularity of Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years and making use of blatantly derivative ornamentation.)

[misko27]

I'm an atheist, so for me, Christmas isn't really about remembering when Christ was born. besides, he was born on a different day, but the early Christians just dumped Christmas over an old pagan celebration, if I remember correctly.

new years: well, as good a time as any to celebrate!

Well, that's why I celebrate it on January 7th my man. So does my whole religion, as a matter of fact. What is means practically though, is getting a free day off from school.

[Darvi]

I celebrate it on 19.9. Yaaaaaay!

[miauw62]

Apparantly the american governement will declare national martial law in 1 or two years and completely take over and murder everybody.

I should stop watching doomsday preppers, but it's so entertaining D: