Please explain my confused me like I’m 5 (0r 4 or 6).

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Yes. They skipped right over. It confused many people at the time: a whole year of their lives, gone. Many centuries later when zero was invented, an explanation was finally offered as to why that happened.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        7 months ago

        Serious answer about what the year would have been in 1 AD, according to 63-year-old Emporer Augustus: DCCLIV 754 Ab Urbe Condita

        That means “from the founding of the city” - they based their calendar on the mythical founding of Rome, as calculated by Verro, who himself was not long dead at that point. Before that, they just counted the years of each person’s reign Japanese-style. Probably other people in the ancient world had older calendars.

    • gregorum@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      For those who don’t know, the concept of zero wasn’t discovered until the sixth century in India, and then either transferred or rediscovered in about the eighth century in Arabia.