Those Dreaded Timelines

Is there anything worse in history than dates? I mean come on! You have to remember everything that happened, when it happened and then you have to try and place it in a timeline so that you think you know when it happened!

History would be much more fun without the AD and BC, this period and that period you know, the one that came before the other period. No wonder you’re confused! Unfortunately, history is all about time and turning back the clock and so dates are necessary, but you can come to grips with them if you have the key!

I believe that to understand the placing of events you need to know how the calendars work, when they were introduced, and how they have changed over the years. Hopefully this article will provide that key for you and if you still feel befuddled after reading it, e-mail me and we’ll work on it together. Here we go!

BC and AD
Dionysius Exiguss was the inventor of BC and AD.
BC simply means 'Before Christ' or before Christ was born. BC years are considered negative years. If you see them in timelines, BC years count down to AD, rather than up as we're used to seeing.

For example:

BC 150 - metal coins first introduced
BC 100 - Cornwall Flourishes

So BC 150 is earlier in history than BC 100.

AD is short for the latin term 'Anno Domini' or the year of our Lord. Exiguss was trying to find the exact day of Easter and the birth of Jesus Christ. AD years are positive years and count up.
For Example:

1582 AD - Gregorian Reform ordered.
1584 AD - Most Catholic countries had accepted the Gregorian Reform.

So an example of BC and AD could look like this:

BC 4 -- BC 3 -- BC 2--BC 1-- Jesus born --AD 1-- AD 2-- AD 3-- AD 4

CE and BCE
To add to the confusion, you'll also often see the abbreviations CE and BCE. Don't let them confuse you at all. They mean the same as BC and AD but are used in writing that teaches. So,

CE = Common Era, another name for AD
BCE = Before Common Era, another name for BC.

Have you ever wondered when teachers talk about centuries, you can't seem to match them to the years? Why does the 17th Century for example cover years in the 1600's? Well you can blame old BC, AD again! There was no year zero between them both. The year BC 1 went directly to the year AD 1. Now what this meant was that we had one century (100 years), that ran from 1 through 100 and the next century ran from 101 through 200.

Go To Page: 1 2 3

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic