Curiosity Question Is there a …

Curiosity Question

Is there a year 0 AD? Does time go from 1 BC to 1 AD or is there a year 0 somewhere?

Answer

There is no year 0. It goes from 1 BC to 1 AD.

Why no year 0?

- The BC/AD system was devised in the 6th century by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus.
- He based it on what he thought was the year of Jesus’ birth.
- At the time, the concept of “zero” as a number wasn’t in use in Europe, so he didn’t include a year 0.

So who was Dionysis Exiguus and why was he the one to create a new date system?

Exiguus, an Eastern Roman monk, created the system in 525 AD though it was not widely used until the 9th century. The system was created in order to calculate Easter.

The year 1 AD was believed to have been the year of Jesus’s conception. “Evidence exists that Dionysius' desire to replace Diocletian years with a calendar based on the incarnation of Christ was to prevent people from believing the imminent end of the world. At the time, some believed that the Second Coming and end of the world would occur 500 years after the birth of Jesus.”

Here’s a short YouTube video that covers Exiguus’s creation of the revised date system.