what did they call the years before christ and how many were on record?

Answer 1

BCE(Before Common Era) About 4,200 roughly.

Answer 2

It would depend where you were. In the Roman Empire they were called AUC from the Latin phrase for 'after the founding of the City' - namely, the legendary founding of Rome by Romulus. Most likely they didn't start using this system until sometime after the actual event (if, indeed it actually took place) so you wouldn't see coins or monuments that said '1 AUC' - AFAIK the designation doesn't appear until the early Republic. AD1 corresponds roughly to 753 AUC, IIRC; but the Romans kept on using their calendar until the Empire fell, because they didn't recognize this Christ dude and weren't about to change their year numbering for him.

In the Hebrew calendar, AD 1 was roughly year 3760. I have no idea if they started at 1 or back-calculated later on. Since it supposedly starts at Creation, the latter seems more likely; however humans have been keeping records long enough that it may be a genuine (or roughly accurate) reckoning from an actual event now lost to history.

Those are more or less Western reckonings; other cultures, notably the Chinese, had their own systems in place at the time.

Answer 3

They had numbers, like we have now. Christ was born in the 3000's some time. Now it is the 5000's somewhere, except that when the catholics took europe by force, they put in the calendar that we use now, with year zero starting at Christ's death, and now we're supposedly only in the 2000's.

There are plenty of years on record before these 5000 years. I don't know how many exactly, though.

Answer 4

They also called them years.

There were many different types of calendars (Aztec, Babylonia, Hebrew) that referenced the time of year, but I do not think the years were numbered like they are now. Even so, the numbers we have now were not put into place until almost 500 AD. Then they just counted backwards to get the BC numbers.

Answer 5

I think the first Christians probably threw all the records out and changed it to B.C.--Before Christ--because they wanted to try to be the only religion in the world.

Answer 6

Before Christ BC or BCE

Answer 7

BC "Before Christ"

Answer 8

Many different cultures had different calenders. The years might be calculated from the start of a dynasty, the start of new capital city, or a major natural disaster.

Answer 9

Who's they? Roman? Mayans? Greeks? Jews? They all had different calendars with different numbers. As for how many are on record, it also depends.

Answer 10

I think they were called the happy years and there just weren't enough of them.