History Date confusion?

Question

I have a question about the bc time period. What is it actually and how do you determine a date? Also ad? Also about centuries. If it says 19th century what is it and also 15th century.

One more thing: If your in the date of 500 BC and its 2000 years later how would you write that date. Would it still be BC or what?

Thanks very much

IM CONFUSED

Answer 1

BC is an acronym for "Before Christ" The dates count backward from the year 0, which is commonly agreed to be the year of Christ's birth. More academically acceptable now is the appreviation BCE, Before the Common Era, as not everyone is Christian.

AD is for Anno Domini, Latin for "The Year of Our Lord" I have always remembered it as "After Death", not being fluent in Latin.

The first Century AD was the year 1-99 (or 100, I forget). That is why the 1900's are the 20th century. I know it is confusion, but the XX century is always a century ahead of the number XX.

It wasn't called BC before Christ was born. I doubt anyone really knew he was coming. Civilizations at the time had their own calendars. There was no standard, really, as they didn't communicate much between continents and countries.

Answer 2

First, the 500 BC + 2000 years thing. The years BC count down going forward so the first 500 years of the 2,000 the number goes down to 1 and then AD starts with 1, not 0, so if you were in June of 500 BC, you have 499½ years in BC, and a year later is ½ a year into AD 1. Then, 1,500 more years go by until you are in June, AD 1501. (So it hasn't been a full 1,501 years in AD until the end of an AD year.)

Centuries are odd seeming. 1st Century is years 1-100, 2nd is years 101-200, and so on. So the 19th Century is years 1801-1900 (no 19 anywhere until the end!) and the 15th Century is years 1401-1500. (Same for milennia so the hullabaloo was about 12-31-2000, not 12-31-1999.)

BC stands for "Before Christ" and AD for "Anno Domini" ("Year of the Lord"). So you can see how unpopular this might be around the world, but so much archeology had been done before Westerners got nicer about respecting everyone, and everyone else (being "PC" and all) that we couldn't just toss it out and re-date every little bit. You're confused now; how 'bout after re-dating and then you have to read a 40yo paper? So they all got on the bandwagon of "BCE" and "CE" ("before common era" and "common era") for BC and AD. We all just winkle on by the fact it still dates before Christ and after. Whatever works, right?

Mostly, funny bits about how centuries end on "00" not "99" and was there a year 0 simply don't matter. You know something happened 4,000 years ago, it doesn't matter much if it was 1999, 2000 or 2001 BC. So just subtract from the starting year, treat any positive number as AD, any negative number as BC. If it's 413 BC and you read something happened two centuries before that, then take -413 and subtract 200 (two centuries) from that to get -613 and it happened about 613 BC. More or less. If it mattered, the exact year that is, what you read would have been more precise to begin with. Or, if your work uses BCE and CE, do the very same thing.

Answer 3

if you are in the 19th century you may are in 1854 or 1872 or 1821, but it begins with 18, if you talk about the 15th century you may talk about 1467 or 1429 or 1487, but it begins with 14.
And about your other question the answer is no, if you are in 500 BC and you add 2000 years then it is 1500 AC, there is a math method for that

The year you want= the date you are(may be BC o AC) - the years you want to add

for example: X = 500BC - 2000 years= 1500 AC

Answer 4

You must remember dates are purely arbitary, determined in accordance with whatever system happens to be in common usage at the time. But if you had been living in 500BC, you wouldn't have known that that is how, 2500 years later, your descendants would have been describing the year in which you were living. You would have called it something entirely different. If you were a Roman it would be the year two hundred and something 'AUC', or 'from the founding of the city'. You certainly wouldn't have called it BC as that means 'before Christ', in other words counting up to that event. As it hadn't happened, you couldn't have known about it and would not have used the system to calculate dates.

We humans, at present, are fixated about the number 10 and its multiples, in particular 100s. We divide our era, AD (Anno Domini) or CE (Common Era) into blocks - days, months, years, centuries - or blocks of 100 years. 19th century merely means the 19th block of 100 years from the commencement of that era.