this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
97 points (92.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43138 readers
1334 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Please explain my confused me like I'm 5 (0r 4 or 6).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 54 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes. They skipped right over. It confused many people at the time: a whole year of their lives, gone. Many centuries later when zero was invented, an explanation was finally offered as to why that happened.

[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Serious answer about what the year would have been in 1 AD, according to 63-year-old Emporer Augustus: ~~DCCLIV~~ 754 Ab Urbe Condita

That means "from the founding of the city" - they based their calendar on the mythical founding of Rome, as calculated by Verro, who himself was not long dead at that point. Before that, they just counted the years of each person's reign Japanese-style. Probably other people in the ancient world had older calendars.