Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!topaz!ll-xn!mit-amt!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!husc6!seismo!nbires!hao!hplabs!tektronix!teklds!dadla!tekla!dant
From: dant@tekla.UUCP (Dan Tilque)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Counting years
Message-ID: <729@tekla.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Aug-86 15:36:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekla.729
Posted: Tue Aug 26 15:36:01 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Aug-86 19:13:56 EDT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR
Lines: 52

>From: steves@tektools.UUCP (steve shellans)

> 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.
=========================================================================