I'm speaking these words to you in the year 2021. You might be listening to them in a different year, but whatever year you happen to be in right now, it will probably be a year using the same number convention for years.

But why did we start counting years at using the same number convention for years.

But why did we start counting years at year one?

And what did they do before that?

And who picked year one?

And why?

And why isn't there a year zero?

And what's the deal with A.D. versus

CE? Learn more about why we count years the way we do on this episode of

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I've had several episodes in the past, which touched on the making of our modern calendar.

I've talked about the development of the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendars.

I've talked about why January 1st is the start of the new year

and where the names of our months come from. However, I've never really talked about why we

number our years the way we do. Every civilization had its own way of counting years. The Islamic

calendar counts years beginning with the migration of Mohammed and his

followers from Mecca to Medina. The Chinese calendar doesn't have a running

number of years as the Gregorian calendar does.

They simply have 60-year cycles, which does make it hard to determine the dates in the distant past.

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