Counting years
steve shellans
What event did people count from before that time?
In other cultures (today or ancient) what events did people
designate as year 0?
I have heard that the Mayan culture 'count' was into the
tens-of-thousands when they disappeared. What conceivable event
could they have been counting from?
Is this topic of interest to anyone else?
Does this belong in some other newsgroup?
Anybody have any answers?
Steve Shellans
Tektronix, Beaverton OR
{decvax, ucbvax, wyvax, ihnp4}!tektronix!tektools!steves
Patrick Stirling
>In western culture, we count years from the birth of Christ.
>What event did people count from before that time?
I think Christianity was the first 'mass religion', ie the first to spread
over significant portions of the world. Before that I would guess that the
largest religion was Judaism - I don't know how they counted years, but seem
to remember that they have a year zero, and that it was a long time befoe 0AD
- perhaps the birth/death of Abraham or Moses (?). I think
that different cutlures counted years differently; eg the Chinese have their
own system (now in the year 4500 or so I think). The Romans dated years from
the 'crowning' of each Emperor. Islam was founded by Mohammed around 750AD,
and they have their own calendar, now in the 1300's.
>Is this topic of interest to anyone else?
Yes, definitely! Another interesting topic is, why count years at all? I'm
sure many cultures don't. Off the cuff, I would guess that it has something
to do with writing - recording events on paper rather than by word of mouth.
patrick
{ihnp4, hplabs, amdcad, ucbvax!dual}!fortune!stirling
sm...@csustan.uucp
>What event did people count from before that time?
In preChristian Rome, years were numbered from the semimythical founding of
the city of Rome by Romulus and Remus. I can't remember the actual Latin
phrase, but I believe that it was something like "the year of the City" or
some such.
>In other cultures (today or ancient) what events did people
>designate as year 0?
First a minor nit: 0 is a recent invention; to date, no society that I know of
counts from year zero. To the meat of your question, the custom in any number
of societies in ancient Mesopotamia (the Tigris/Euphrates valley, in the middle
of Iraq) was to count the years in terms of the length of the current king's
reign. That is, if Bubblehead the first is king, and has been for 9 years,
then the date is referred to as the ninth year of Bubblehead's reign. It makes
it kind of difficult to correlate events over a long period of time if you lose
a king. Since what we refer to as Western Civilization is traditionally con-
sidered to have descended from the societies of Mesopotamia (Sumeria and
Babylon are specific examples), it is likely that later (but still preRoman)
civilizations (such as Phoenicia and Greece) used a similar method.
>Steve Shellans
>Tektronix, Beaverton OR
>{decvax, ucbvax, wyvax, ihnp4}!tektronix!tektools!steves
\scott
--
Scott Hazen Mueller lll-crg.arpa!csustan!smdev
City of Turlock work: (209) 668-5590 -or- 5628
901 South Walnut Avenue home: (209) 527-1203
Turlock, CA 95380 <Insert pithy saying here...>
Dan Tilque
> In western culture, we count years from the birth of Christ.
> What event did people count from before that time?
> In other cultures (today or ancient) what events did people
> designate as year 0?
> I have heard that the Mayan culture 'count' was into the
> tens-of-thousands when they disappeared. What conceivable event
> could they have been counting from?
>
> Is this topic of interest to anyone else?
> Does this belong in some other newsgroup?
> Anybody have any answers?
>
> Steve Shellans
> Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Up until the beginning of the Middle Ages, years were generally
counted from the time the current king or emperor took over.
The Romans also had a system of years counting from the founding
of Rome, but I'm not sure how extensively it was used.
Sometime in the 5th century a monk came up with the idea of
using the birthyear of Christ as the year 1 and the practice
slowly spread. Since at this time, it was not known exactly
when Christ was born, the year 1 is probably not when Christ was
born. There are several theories about exactly when he was
born (most put it from 4 to 7 B.C.).
There is also a slight problem with the calendar in that there
is no year zero. The years go directly from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1
(obviously this monk was not a C programmer :-). This adds a slight
complication when computing durations which start in B.C. and end
in A.D.
As I understand it, the Mayans counted days from the last recreation
of the world which, according to their mythology, went through
periodic destruction and recreation. I don't know how they came
up with the date of the previous recreation.
This is somewhat similar to the Hindu calendar which also had
extremely long cycles (the Hindus were counting into the billions
and trillions when the Europeans didn't even have a number for
million).
=========================================================================
Dan Tilque UUCP: tektronix!dadla!dant
CSnet: dant%dadla@tektronix
ARPAnet: dant%dadla%tektronix@csnet-relay
Drugs are for people who can't handle science-fiction.
=========================================================================
John Blankenagel
> In article <14...@tektools.UUCP> ste...@tektools.UUCP (steve shellans) writes:
> >In western culture, we count years from the birth of Christ.
> >What event did people count from before that time?
>
> of societies in ancient Mesopotamia (the Tigris/Euphrates valley, in the middle
> of Iraq) was to count the years in terms of the length of the current king's
> reign. That is, if Bubblehead the first is king, and has been for 9 years,
> then the date is referred to as the ninth year of Bubblehead's reign. It makes
> >Tektronix, Beaverton OR
> >{decvax, ucbvax, wyvax, ihnp4}!tektronix!tektools!steves
>
And the Japanese still do it this way. This year is Showa 63 or 64 or
something like that. The current emperor (Hirohito) has been around for
about that long.
John Blankenagel
sm...@csustan.uucp
>In article <14...@tektools.UUCP> ste...@tektools.UUCP (steve shellans) writes:
>>In western culture, we count years from the birth of Christ.
>>What event did people count from before that time?
>
>I think Christianity was the first 'mass religion', ie the first to spread
>over significant portions of the world. Before that I would guess that the
>largest religion was Judaism
Judaism, to the best of my knowledge, has _never_ been a major religion in
terms of numbers (which is what I take the word "largest" to mean in the
above). The Jewish calendar is an obscure little thing (with a year currently
in the 5-or-6 thousands) based on lunar cycles. Certain holidays, such as
Passover and, by definition, Easter (the first Sunday after the first night
of Passover) are based on this lunar calendar and therefore tend to wander over
the more common solar-based calendar in everyday use.
>The Romans dated years from the 'crowning' of each Emperor.
The Roman calendar is not based on kings; others are, but the Roman calendar
is based on when the city of Rome (urbs aeternis, the Eternal City) was
founded. This makes sense - if you expect your city to last forever, why not
count based on its founding.
>Islam was founded by Mohammed around 750AD, and they have their own calendar,
>now in the 1300's.
No argument here, but I would like to note that the Islamic calendar is also
a lunar based calendar. Some years are twelve months long, others are
thirteen months; it's all phase-of-the-moon-dependent.
>>Is this topic of interest to anyone else?
Obviously...
Also, if anyone out there lives someplace where they don't/didn't use the
so-called "Common Era" (or "Christian Era") and would like to comment based
on experience, I'm sure we're all interested in hearing from you.
>patrick
>{ihnp4, hplabs, amdcad, ucbvax!dual}!fortune!stirling
\scott
Tom Harris
> What event did people count from before that time?
> In other cultures (today or ancient) what events did people
> designate as year 0?
> I have heard that the Mayan culture 'count' was into the
> tens-of-thousands when they disappeared. What conceivable event
> could they have been counting from?
The Mayan calendar was lunar, not solar driven. The solar calander
was of little concern to them as they lived rain forests where one
season is pretty much the same as another. If some one referred to
a very high Mayan calender date, I would suspect it referred to
lunar months not years.
As for Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans while they had city founding
dates (mostly mythological) commonly and in official documents
time was referred to as the year so and so was in charge. It was
not until Herodotus started written history that anybody cares
to connect the various dates for cities together and even then
only the historians are at all concerned. Note: the founding year
of the city had significance only to the various priests prior to
that.
I know that both the Isrealis and the Chinese have alternate
calender systems, but I'm not sure what they are tied to.
Even our own system doesn't get set up until several centuries
after the fact (I'm not sure when, but it has to be after the
Rome/Constaniople split). This is one of the reasons that the
time 0 is off by four years (after six centuries people had kind
of lost count). Note: 1BC is followed by 1AD there is no year 0.
Further it is even more recent, say about the Renaisance, that the
majority of people had any idea (or concern) about what year it
was (plus or minus a century). It took the rise of the large
banking houses and the modern buerucratic state before anybody
worried about tracking things over a suffeceint period of time to
need to number the years (secularly).
Hi Ho,
Tom H.
Bob Bentley
>
>In preChristian Rome, years were numbered from the semimythical founding of
>the city of Rome by Romulus and Remus. I can't remember the actual Latin
>phrase, but I believe that it was something like "the year of the City" or
>some such.
>
meaning "from the founding of the city". Year 0 AUC is traditionally reckoned
as 753 BC.
--
Bob Bentley
Intel Corp. - Hillsboro, Oregon
... ihnp4!verdix!ogcvax!inteloa!rmb
"personally my ambition is to get my time as a cockroach shortened for good
behaviour and be promoted to a revenue officer it is not much of a step up but
i am humble"
m...@styx.uucp
> . . .
> in the 5-or-6 thousands) based on lunar cycles. Certain holidays, such as
> Passover and, by definition, Easter (the first Sunday after the first night
Not obscure; merely lunar. (Though the occasional "leap months" do tend
to make calculation more interesting.) The current Jewish year is
something like 5742. Somebody will no doubt definitively correct this.
> Also, if anyone out there lives someplace where they don't/didn't use the
> so-called "Common Era" (or "Christian Era") and would like to comment based
> on experience, I'm sure we're all interested in hearing from you.
When I was in Japan last year I noticed that counting of years was about
equally divided between the western system (A.D.) and the traditional
Japanese system which is based on the tenure of the emperor. The current year
is (I believe) Showa 61. ("Showa", meaning "harmony", is the ceremonial
name of the current emperor known to westerners as Hirohito.) Most of
the credit card & cash register receipts, etc. showed the date as 60/11/15,
60/XI/15, or 11/15/60 (this was November 1985), but many people spoke
of the date as 1985.
Michael C. Berch
ARPA: m...@lll-tis-b.ARPA
UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb
Joel Upchurch
In addition to the methods already mentioned about the
Romans they also dated by consuls. Thus you would see a
date like `in the year of the consulship of Joe Blow and
Richard Roe'.
The Greeks also had a dating system using the Olympics
every 4 years so you would have `in the 3rd year of the
27th Olympiad'.
--
Joel Upchurch @ CONCURRENT Computer Corporation (A Perkin-Elmer Company)
Southern Development Center
2486 Sand Lake Road/ Orlando, Florida 32809/ (305)850-1031
{decvax!ucf-cs, ihnp4!pesnta, vax135!petsd, akgua!codas}!peora!joel
Mike Lipsie
>Not obscure; merely lunar. (Though the occasional "leap months" do tend
>to make calculation more interesting.) The current Jewish year is
>something like 5742. Somebody will no doubt definitively correct this.
>
(according to the date book prepared by the B'nai B'rith which attempts
to give all major holidays for Jews, Christians, and various minority
groups).
--
Mike Lipsie {allegra,cmcl2,decwrl,hplabs,topaz,ut-sally}!pyramid!mikel
Pyramid Technology Corp, Mountain View, CA +1 415 965 7200 ext. 4980
Josiah S. Carberry
I remember reading a book of essays by Isaac Asimov in which
he proposed a new calendar. I don't remember the details, but
it seemed very logical (if unconventional). I believe it had
the virtues of not having to account for "leap" years, and each
date fell on the same day of the week each year. It had something
like an 80 day month, and I think the "week" may not have had
7 days.
Anybody remember this, who can post some more details? The book
may have been "The Tragedy of the Moon", but I'm not sure.
=========================================
"PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!"
Scott J. Berry ihnp4!hou2g!scott
a...@nbc1.uucp
> > . . .
> > The Jewish calendar is an obscure little thing (with a year currently
> > in the 5-or-6 thousands) based on lunar cycles. Certain holidays, such as
> > Passover and, by definition, Easter (the first Sunday after the first night
> > of Passover) are based on this lunar calendar [...]
>
> Not obscure; merely lunar. (Though the occasional "leap months" do tend
> to make calculation more interesting.) The current Jewish year is
> something like 5742. Somebody will no doubt definitively correct this.
And here's the correction: it's currently 5745.
Also: the Jewish calendar is not strictly Lunar (as is the Moslem), but
is luni-solar. Although the months are based strictly on the phases of the
moon, there is a "leap month" added 7 times every 19 years. (This is
where the "solar" part comes in.) So although months tend to wander slightly
(when compared to the Christian calendar), it permits religious holidays
to occur during the proper time of the year.
The Moslem calendar, on the other hand, is purely lunar, and the months
wander. Ramadan can be in winter one year, and several years later (14?)
it will have cycled around to summer.
The Jewish year is based on the date of the creation of the world
(gleaned from careful discussion and analysis of biblical sources).
Note also that Easter is no longer tied to Passover. One of the popes
(Gregory?) devised an alternate algorithm for calculating when Easter
occurs (see Knuth Volume I for the exact algorithm).
--
Andrew Siegel, N2CN NBC Computer Imaging, New York, NY
philabs!nbc1!abs (212)664-5776
DJ Yang
> > so-called "Common Era" (or "Christian Era") and would like to comment based
> > on experience, I'm sure we're all interested in hearing from you.
>
> is (I believe) Showa 61, But many people spoke of the date as 1985.
>
In ancient China, they use the tenure of the emperor, too. But, in addition
to that, they also use two more characters to identify it. The first group
has 10 different characters and the second has 12 (which most of you might
heard of it -- that's the 12 animals [Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake,
Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Boar]).
So, they refer years as "ABC 12, the year of Dragon", or officially,
"ABC 12, the year of XY" where ABC is the name of the emperor and X is a
character from group 1 and Y from group 2.
There are 60 combinations in this method. So with the year of the emperor
and the two characters, historian has very little problem in counting years
even in earlt history.
After the revolution to overturn Tsing dynasty, there is no more emperor,
so they count year as "the 75th year of the Republic of China", which is 1986,
the year of Tiger.
Evan Marcus
In article <9...@hou2g.UUCP> sc...@hou2g.UUCP (Josiah S. Carberry) writes:
>
>I remember reading a book of essays by Isaac Asimov in which
>he proposed a new calendar. I don't remember the details, but
>it seemed very logical (if unconventional). I believe it had
>the virtues of not having to account for "leap" years, and each
>date fell on the same day of the week each year. It had something
>like an 80 day month, and I think the "week" may not have had
>7 days.
>
>Anybody remember this, who can post some more details? The book
>may have been "The Tragedy of the Moon", but I'm not sure.
>
Well, I don't know if this was proposed by Isaac, but I remember seeing a
proposal for another kind of calendar. The calendar I saw had 13 months of
28 days (13 x 28 = 364). Every month could start on the same day, and
every month, each date fell on the same day of the week. (i.e. every month
the 10th could be a Thursday) The calendar would NOT start on a Sunday,
though, for all the superstitious people who didn't like Fridays on the
13th.
There would be an extra day (2 in leap years), and these would not fall on
a regular part of the calendar; they would not be 'days of the week', but
rather would be special days that would simply have names, and be national
holidays.
Finally, I believe the 13th month was called "Universal". (I think the
movie studio was behind it...:-) )
Am I the only person who remembers this system??
--
NAME: Evan L. Marcus
UUCP: ...{pesnta|prcrs|princeton|topaz|hjuxa|vax135}!petsd!pedsgo!evan
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M/S 308, 106 Apple St., Tinton Falls, NJ 07724
MA BELL:(201) 758-7357
QUOTE: "Use more honey; find out what she knows." -- John Whorfen
Bill Bulko
>>
>> I remember reading a book of essays by Isaac Asimov in which
>> he proposed a new calendar. I don't remember the details, but
>> it seemed very logical (if unconventional). I believe it had
>> the virtues of not having to account for "leap" years, and each
>> date fell on the same day of the week each year. It had something
>> like an 80 day month, and I think the "week" may not have had
>> 7 days.
>>
>
>similar "calendar reform" proposal many years ago. . .
The proposal Bob described sounds a lot like one I saw in Science Digest
about 10 years ago. I think the plan was called "the Equal-Quarter
Calendar" or something like that. The months were redefined as follows:
30 days: Jan Apr Jul Oct
30 days: Feb May Aug Nov
31 days: Mar Jun Sep Dec
I really don't remember just which months were assigned 31 days, but
it's not important. The important facts were:
(1) There were 364 days in a year, broken into four equivalent quarters
of 91 days. Since 91 is a multiple of seven, each quarter represented
a group of complete weeks with no stray days. Therefore, in implementing
the calendar, we would define January 1 to be Sunday (or whichever
day you prefer) and from then on, every quarter of every year would
always start with a Sunday. Also note that the same three-month
physical calendar (of 30,30,31 days) could be reused forever.
(2) The 365th day of the year would be tacked on at the end (after Dec 31)
as a "Year-End Day", with no weekday designation (i.e. Sun, Mon, etc.)
associated with it. The author of the article suggested this be a
national holiday or something, sort of like our current New Year's Day.
(National Football Bowl Game Day?)
(3) On leap years, we would have an extra day called "Mid-Year's Day" --
inserted after June 31. Like "Year-End Day", this would have no
weekday designation.
I kind of liked the proposal myself, but I also realized that it would
certainly not be implemented in my lifetime. Sort of like the US going
metric, I suppose.
Bill
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
"In the knowledge lies the power." -- Edward A. Feigenbaum
"Knowledge is good." -- Emil Faber
Bill Bulko The University of Texas
bu...@sally.UTEXAS.EDU Department of Computer Sciences
_______________________________________________________________________________
Joel Upchurch
>he proposed a new calendar. I don't remember the details, but
>it seemed very logical (if unconventional). I believe it had
>the virtues of not having to account for "leap" years, and each
>date fell on the same day of the week each year. It had something
>like an 80 day month, and I think the "week" may not have had
>7 days.
>
>Anybody remember this, who can post some more details? The book
>may have been "The Tragedy of the Moon", but I'm not sure.
If I recall correctly, what Asimov proposed was to have 4
quarters of 91 days each, which consisted of 2 months of 30
days and 1 of 31. During a regular year there would be an
intercalary day, New Year's day, which wouldn't belong to
any quarter or week. During Leap years, Leap day would also
be an intercalary day.
The advantage to this scheme, is that each quarter would be
exactly 13 weeks long, so that a particular date would
always fall on the same day of the week. Also since all the
quarters are identical, all you really need is a calendar
for one quarter, then you could use it forever.
I think the chances of calendar reform, rank right up there
with decimal time, i.e., slim and none. The basic problem
is that the year isn't a integral number of days, and any
solution to that is going to be a kludge. It seems to me
that the idea of intercalary days, which every calendar
reform scheme I've heard of uses, creates nearly as many
problems as it solves.
The only really elegant solution to the problem would be to
move the earth slightly closer to the sun, so that the year
is exactly 364 days long. Of course you could get the same
effect by slowing down the Earth's rotation slightly, but
that would mess up all the clocks. |->
Scott Hazen Mueller
>I remember reading a book of essays by Isaac Asimov in which
>he proposed a new calendar. I don't remember the details, but
>it seemed very logical (if unconventional). I believe it had
>the virtues of not having to account for "leap" years, and each
>date fell on the same day of the week each year. It had something
>like an 80 day month, and I think the "week" may not have had
>7 days.
>Anybody remember this, who can post some more details? The book
>may have been "The Tragedy of the Moon", but I'm not sure.
As I recall, he proposed four 90-day quarters (360 days total) which would
be arranged in "weeks" (I don't remember how long either, but it was almost
certainly a divisor of 90). The rest of the days in a year would be accounted
for by inserting days between the quarters. These days would not be part of
any week. The result would have been that the same calendar could be used for
each and every year (with the relatively trivial exception of leap year, which
would create yet another extra day). At the time, I found Isaac's argument
very convincing...
Fabbian G. Dufoe
> The only really elegant solution to the problem would be to
> move the earth slightly closer to the sun, so that the year
> is exactly 364 days long. Of course you could get the same
> effect by slowing down the Earth's rotation slightly, but
> that would mess up all the clocks. |->
> --
> Joel Upchurch @ CONCURRENT Computer Corporation (A Perkin-Elmer Company)
> Southern Development Center
> 2486 Sand Lake Road/ Orlando, Florida 32809/ (305)850-1031
> {decvax!ucf-cs, ihnp4!pesnta, vax135!petsd, akgua!codas}!peora!joel
It's good to see someone finally suggesting solutions to the problem
instead of just talking about the problem. While you're at it, why not
rearrange everything so a year is made up of 100 days, each of which lasts
for 10 hours which consist of 100 minutes of 100 seconds.
Fabbian Dufoe
350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
813-823-2350
UUCP: ...akgua!akguc!codas!peora!ucf-cs!usfvax2!jc3b21!fgd3
e.c.leeper
> to remember that they have a year zero, and that it was a long time befoe 0AD
> - perhaps the birth/death of Abraham or Moses (?). I think
Year zero was supposedly the creation of the world.
Evelyn C. Leeper
(201) 957-2070
ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl
mtgzy!e...@topaz.rutgers.edu
With drugs you experience everything and understand nothing.
e.c.leeper
> to make calculation more interesting.) The current Jewish year is
> something like 5742. Somebody will no doubt definitively correct this.
5746. October 4, 1986 CE, will be Tishri 1, 5747. (My Hebrew calendar
conversion program claims today is Elul -1, 5746, however, so there's still
a bug somewhere!)
Evelyn C. Leeper
(201) 957-2070
ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl
mtgzy!e...@topaz.rutgers.edu
'Goto' is a four-letter word.
envname
we get to keep 7 day weeks. The extra day came at the end of the year.
I think that the extra extra day for leap years came at the middle of
the year.
Also, the extra days were not counted as days of the week.
always falls on the same day of the week.
--
I admit it! I don't believe in Mary Worth! I Lied! HaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!!
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Joel Upchurch
Hey I just got a great idea for calendar reform. Lets use a
364 day year. I mean back when 90% of the population were
farmers it made good sense for the calendar and solar year
to match, but now that only 2% of us are farmers, why do all
this stupid arithmetic? So what if it snows in July 120
years from now, the people in the Southern Hemisphere seem
to be able to put up with it. This way we could use the
same calendar every year. The astronomers can keep their
own calendar. %-)
D. Glenn Arthur Jr.
>
> It's good to see someone finally suggesting solutions to the problem
> instead of just talking about the problem. While you're at it, why not
> rearrange everything so a year is made up of 100 days, each of which lasts
> for 10 hours which consist of 100 minutes of 100 seconds.
>
Your decimal bias is showing. Personally, I favour a binary system.
Perhaps 256 days of 32 hours of 64 minutes of 64 seconds? (I could
also use the extra time in a day.)
D. Glenn Arthur Jr.
..!seismo!dolqci!hqhomes!glenn