Millenium ?

[johnno]

An argument has been going on between two friends of mine for over a year now, does anyone have the answer......firstly one says the millenium new year we had was the true millenium, other one says that the true millenium should have been one year before, as you have a time scale of 12 months to make it to year 01, that means that the millenium should have been in the year 1999, hope ive put this right way round, but if anyone has a answer, then great, as i can e-mail it on to my friends, as im sick of hearing there argument

[archbishop]

If you look at the time frame 1BCE or 1 BC, the next year was 1AD there was no year 0. Worked it out yet?

[johnno]

Not really archbishop

[sft42]

Leaving aside all considerations about swaping from julian/gregorian calender types then assuming that you've actually got it the wrong way round and the millenium parties should have been held on 31st December 2000 going into the year 2001.....this all goes back to, as our resident man of the cloth says, when big JC popped out....the time line goes 2bc...1bc.....1ad...2ad...etc. so with no year zero the first century wasn't completed till the end of year 100 going into 101 was the second century.....folloing this forward it applies equally to millenia as much as centuries so everyone was a year early not a year late.

[johnno]

Thanks a million (or should i say millenium), yeah thought i had it wrong way around, but happy now as this can be sent onto my feuding friends, thanks sft42

[paulz]

So by this logic when you are born you are a year old? your first birthday is realy your second?

[bernardo]

No, paulz; dates do not have zero (as sft42 said, the modern reckoning of historical dates is that 1BC was followed immediately by 1AD, and there was no year 0) but ages do. Similarly, the millenium started on 1st January 2001 - not on the 0th of January (January being the 1st month of the year, not the 0th). When a baby is born, it is zero years old but it is already in the first year of its life. Just as it takes the baby a whole year to reach its first birthday, it takes a century a whole hundred years before it finishes. So the first century started with 1AD and took 100 years (not 99 years) to finish with 100AD.

[paulz]

Bernardo - I'm not really that worried, we're all entitled to when we want to celebrate what. In any case it's a bit academic as both dates have passed and I won't be around to argue the point in 97 or 98 years from now!

[geofbob]

Perhaps the easiest way of understanding this is to think of cricket. You don't applaud a batsman for his century when he's scored 99, but only when he's scored 100. Correspondingly, you don't celebrate someone's first birthday when they're born, but only when they're entering their second year; and you celebrate their 100th birthday when they're entering their 101st year. So why should we have celebrated the new Millennium after only 999 years of the old one? The fact is we were all mesmerised by the novelty of starting the number of the year with a 2 instead of a 1, and we celebrated that.

[paulz]

should've read 997/998 doh!

[alex p]

Glad to see so many people agree that the new millennium was celebrated early.