what was time called before BC?

Question

We denote years as BC or AD,but before BC there was nothing to base years on;so what was time called before BC?

Answer 1

(Not sure why this is a Biology question ... but it's a *great* question.)

There were many, many regional calendars, each with a different way of counting the years.

For example, in the ancient Roman calendars the years were named after the consuls who were in power. For example (quoting wiki here) "205 BC was The year of the consulship of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus and Publius Licinius Crassus." They kept careful lists of the consuls, (which is how we can translate these dates today). Eventually they shifted to counting years from the foundation of Rome (around 753 BC), although different scholars disagreed about when this date was.

The same held true in ancient Greek calendars ... such as the Attic calendar used in Athens/Attica. "Instead of citing a numbered year, one could locate a year in time by saying that some event occurred "when X. was archon." This did allow the years to be ordered back in time for a number of generations into the past, but there was no way of dating forward beyond ordinary human reckoning (as in expressions such as "Ten years from now")." (See source 2.)

Also, keep in mind that the the current AD/BC system wasn't in use until 1582 AD, when Pope Gregory XIII decreed that it be used in the Christian world. Before then, we used the Julian calendar (instituted by Julius Caesar), which inherited the bewildering arrays of Roman year numbering systems (see third source).

But it's also important to know that there are *many* Calendar Eras besides the AD/BC system we are familiar with. Here is an excellent page that summarizes most of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_era

Answer 2

Nothing was before BC because BC keeps going back to the millions of years BC.

Answer 3

BC stands for earlier Christ contained in the Gregorian calendar, inspite of the indisputable fact that the designation BC/ad did not exist till thousands of years after Christ's lack of life (and resurrection, in case you've self assurance in that.) using BC and ad change into first recorded in about 525 ad and did not come into well-known use till the 700s. earlier that, they used different calendars. The Romans many times dated calendars from the founding of Rome, as an celebration, the Greeks measured time by the Olympic video games, and the Jewish calendar (nevertheless in use) dates from a student's calculation of the starting up of the global, etc.

Answer 4

You feel the need to make a classification - call it a and b - only if you have a point from where a is different from b. Since there wasn't any kind of reference point before Christ, people were not classifying their eras in something like "before x" and "after x". Of course, they related their time with past events like wars, pandemies and stuffs like these (like people in small, undeveloped villages still do), but this is something else.

Answer 5

well I imagine it depended on where you lived. the mayans had their own calendar, the chinese still do. BC and AD is what most the western world uses; the farther back you go the more calendars there were i assume.

Answer 6

You answered your question; there was no time before BC.

Answer 7

BC stands for Before Christ.
AD stands for Anno Domini "In the year of the Lord".
This assumes that Jesus Christ was born in the year, well there is no year zero, the years jump from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1, so when was Jesus born?

It has been determined that Jesus Christ could not have been born any later than 4 B.C. because King Herod was in power at the time (Matthew 2:1) and according to secular records King Herod died in 4 B.C.

However, Luke 2:1-2 offers us what looks like a convincing piece of historical detail when he tells us that Jesus was born at the time of the census of Quirinius, which took place in A.D. 6. Thus we have Jesus born no later than 4 B.C., and at the same time no earlier than A.D. 6. The gospels are littered with such inconsistencies—just further evidence that Jesus never existed.

Thus new names have come into usage to replace B.C. and A.D.

B.C.E. or B.P. - Before the Common Era or Before the Present era (same as B.C.)
C.E. - Common Era (same as A.D.)

A.D. is usually placed before a date, as in A.D. 43.
all other abbreviations, B.C., B.C.E., B.P., C.E., are usually placed after the date.

For example: 70 C.E. (same as A.D. 70)
490 B.C.E. (same as 490 B.C.)
490 B.P (same as 490 B.C.)

Understand, Man invented time and needed a way to keep records of the events in past and present, therefore began to keep records of time. As a begining date, A set date the suposid birth of Jeasus was used among the Christians as a reference point.
Here's more:

A calendar is a system of organizing units of time for the purpose of reckoning time over extended periods. By convention, the day is the smallest calendrical unit of time; the measurement of fractions of a day is classified as timekeeping. The generality of this definition is due to the diversity of methods that have been used in creating calendars. Although some calendars replicate astronomical cycles according to fixed rules, others are based on abstract, perpetually repeating cycles of no astronomical significance. Some calendars are regulated by astronomical observations, some carefully and redundantly enumerate every unit, and some contain ambiguities and discontinuities. Some calendars are codified in written laws; others are transmitted by oral tradition.
The common theme of calendar making is the desire to organize units of time to satisfy the needs and preoccupations of society. In addition to serving practical purposes, the process of organization provides a sense, however illusory, of understanding and controlling time itself. Thus calendars serve as a link between mankind and the cosmos. It is little wonder that calendars have held a sacred status and have served as a source of social order and cultural identity. Calendars have provided the basis for planning agricultural, hunting, and migration cycles, for divination and prognostication, and for maintaining cycles of religious and civil events. Whatever their scientific sophistication, calendars must ultimately be judged as social contracts, not as scientific treatises.

According to a recent estimate (Fraser, 1987), there are about forty calendars used in the world today. This chapter is limited to the half-dozen principal calendars in current use. Furthermore, the emphasis of the chapter is on function and calculation rather than on culture. The fundamental bases of the calendars are given, along with brief historical summaries. Although algorithms are given for correlating these systems, close examination reveals that even the standard calendars are subject to local variation. With the exception of the Julian calendar, this chapter does not deal with extinct systems. Inclusion of the Julian calendar is justified by its everyday use in historical studies.

Answer 8

The Hebrew calendar is almost to the year 6,000. They've been counting since the beginning.

Answer 9

The future.

Answer 10

Nothing. They just went about their day and called it "this is the year...".