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Did the year zero never exist ? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

79 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

ELI5 answer?

In the conventional calendar, there wasn’t a year zero and it wasn’t skipped. Zero is the moment in time that we use to begin counting time.

Think of an elementary school style number line: …-3_-2_-1_0_1_2_3… Each number is one year apart. This makes the numbers measure something like Age. If you are 3 years old, you can count 3 years between 0 and 3.

But a year is not an Age. It is the span of time between ages, and the years we name are actually the spaces between the numbers on the number line. So the first year (1 AD/CE) is the first space after zero (between 0 and 1), and the first negative year (1 BC/BCE) is the first space before the 0 (between -1 and 0).

Then there is the astronomical calendar, which does have a year zero. They get this by naming the year (the space on the number line) after the number to the right side of the space on the number line.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

By this description, year zero is the time between the 0 and the 1 for the same reason the time between 10 and 11 is the year 10.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Your logic is correct, but you are off by 1.

0-1 is year 1
10-11 is year 11