dphoadley opened this issue on Jan 01, 2010 · 64 posts
ockham posted Fri, 01 January 2010 at 7:17 AM
Since the people living in what we call 1 AD didn't know they were living
in 1 AD, the whole system is a "retrofit" anyway ... so we can decide to
start the decades and centuries anywhere we want. Most folks didn't use
calendars at all, and the Romans, Jews, Chinese, and other civilizations each
had a separate calendar that was way over 1 at that time.
The notion that years need to be synchronized or consistent in any way
is quite recent. For instance, England (and the American colonies)
started the year on March 25 until 1752, and they seemed to
handle this "inconsistency" without any trouble.