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?
In: 0
One of your points, “why did we keep it going”, is sort of in flux. Historians and anthropologists trying to implement a less Christian-biased system prefer to use BCE and CE, which mean “Before Common Era” and “Common Era”, respectively.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “counted them normally”. You mean, like, from the beginning of time? Nobody was around back then. Even if we’re going to fast forward to the earliest human civilizations (again a dicey proposition since the boundary of when we stopped being apes and started being humans is a little nebulous) nobody picked a year 0 and decided that every year after that. People were too busy trying to not be eaten by a saber toothed tiger. If we in the modern era decided to retroactively pick a year 0 using our evidence of the earliest known humans all it would take to upend everything is a new discovery that moves the timeline of the emergence of humans further back (which has happened a few times already).
No, everyone’s already using the current system so it’s easier to keep doing that. If you want things to be less biased towards Christianity—as I think is correct when studying archaeology and history—then you can use BCE and CE
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