We Use Letters That Show Us If the Year Happened Before Or After the Year 0

Timelines! Every culture has a calendar – a way to tell time throughout the year and from year to year. Most of the world now uses the same calendar, but for many years, each civilization had its own system.

For example, according to the ancient Hebrew calendar, this year is 5770, not 2010. Our calendar says that this is the year 2010, but the Earth has been around for a lot longer than that. How do we write dates that happened more than 2010 years ago?

We use letters that show us if the year happened before or after the year 0.

These letters are which is before 0, and which is after 0.

For example, this year is 2010 because this is after the year 0.

Christians developed this system of numbers based on the year that Jesus was born. B.C. stands for “before Christ.” A.D. stands for “anno domini” which is Latin for “in the year of our Lord,” meaning the year Jesus was born. A.D. does NOT stand for “after death.”

Recently, people have developed new abbreviations that are sometimes used instead of B.C. and A.D. They thought that there should be a way of describing dates that is not tied to a particular religion.

These abbreviations are which stands for “before the common era” and

which stands for “common era”

They use the same numbers as the Christian calendar. For example, this year is 2010 CE. Only the letters afterward are different.

Timelines are a way to show events in order, as well as give an idea about the amount of time between events. On a timeline, before the year 0, the larger the number, the longer ago it happened. Now that you know this, which of these dates happened first?

509 BC or 53 BC 476 AD or 307 CE 476 CE or 307 BCE ------0------Understanding Time! 1. Put the following in order from the furthest back in history to the most recent.

A. 296 CE B. 1016 BC

30 CE 392 BCE

1984 AD 512 AD

3 CE 32 BCE

502 AD 143 BC

1542 CE 2000 AD

12 AD 1616 BC

629 CE 98 BCE

1112 AD 5 BC

2. Centuries – During which century did the following date occur?

1986 CE 621 BCE 1605 AD 196 BC 486 CE 84 BCE 607 AD 512 BC 1812 CE 2010 BCE 12 AD 2010 AD 1060 CE 98 BCE 899 AD 3 BC Computing Time in the Common Era System

BIRTH OF CHRIST

BC Before Christ Anno Domini (in the year of our lord) AD 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 100 200 300 400 500 600

1. An individual was born in 400 BCE and lived for 50 years. When did he die?

2. The Olmec civilization was established about 1200 BCE. How many years ago was that?

3. The printing press was invented in 1450. In what century was it invented?