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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Humans generally live less than a hundred years. History goes back to when? We didn’t really get into writing until perhaps 5,000 years or so ago (likely a bit more). So there are no references to a “normal count” for years (how would humans ever agree given no writing and certainly no global communication)
Hence year counts are necessarily arbitrary. Some culture/religion/government/ruler picks a time and says “start from here”. Even today, there are other calendars in use (Jewish, Chinese, Muslim) Just happens that in this time and period of history, the Julian calendar seems like the most global one. That isn’t any guarantee that it will always remain that way in the future.
Certainly no one alive at 1 AD thought of their year as 1 AD. This was only really established arbitrarily by the Catholic/Christian church some few centuries later. And clearly it would be ridiculous for someone alive at the time to say “this is the year 1 BC”. (think about it)
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