I understand what each one means. As well as BCE and CE. But I’m wondering why did we feel the need the number the years according to Jesus’ supposed birthday. And if it was so flawed (nobody even knows if Jesus was real, let alone when his birthday was) why did we keep it going? Could you imagine what year we could be in right now if we counted them normally?
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The Catholic Church established the calendar, so they numbered years based on Jesus’s birth.
The Roman calendar had 10 months and added days every once in a while to keep it in sync with the seasons. They numbered years based on the founding of Rome. This was then replaced with the Julian Calendar (named for Julius Ceasar) with the familiar 12 months and a leap day every 4 years. They still counted years based on the founding of Rome.
The Catholic Church took this calendar but changed the date based on Jesus’s birth, and then they spread this across the (christian) world.
The Julian Calendar has a flaw though, it slowly drifts out of place because a year is slightly shorter than 365.25 days, so in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII established the Gregorian Calendar, which we use today. The Gregorian Calendar skips the leap day every 100 years, except for every 400 years. (1900 isn’t a leap year, but 2000 is).
BCE and CE is a way to remove the religious connotation, but keep the number the same for simplicity.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson said he used BC and AD because the Catholic Church organized an extremely accurate calendar for the world, and they deserve recognition for that.
At the end of the day, it’s an arbitrary 0 point, and the world is full of those, so does it really matter where it is as long as we can agree? (Even though there is no year 0)
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