When did it end/start, of course we celebrated the end of the last millennia and the start of the new one on 31st December 1999. That makes sense to me, is the same way that I am 55 years old though am in my 56th year, 1999 was the 1000 year of the millennia and at midnight in 31st December 1999 1000 years had elapsed since the end of the previous millennia.
So 23:59:59 on 31st December 1999 was the last second of the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the last week of the last month of the last year of the last decade of the last century of the last millennia.
However some subscribe to the view that we should have celebrated the millennium on 31st December 2000, and there are apparently a few different arguments for this, one of which is that we are talking about time relative to the birth of Christ and that at the time people would have commenced counting at "1" and not at "0" - I cant say I agree with that as people were familiar with decimal and fractions in those days currency existed and transactional arrangements were made all of which required a numerical understanding that surely would have been applied to time.
Thoughts and opinions?
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Shirley the Minnellium should have ended 2000 years after 0AD? i.e. at the END of the year 2000.
Of course there was a genuine potential problem with systems built only for 1900s, but that's a different issue.
You don't celebrate your 40th birthday at the beginning of your 40th year do you?
Of course they wouldn't have called it 0AD, or 1AD for that matter at the time, but they would have celebrated Jesus's birthday one year after he was born, and his 2000th birthday 2000 years after his birth.
No question as far as I am concerned:)
Last edited by: Manatee on Sat 19 Aug 17 at 10:38
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I agree you don't celebrate your 40th birthday at the beginning of your 40th year, though of course your 40th year commences on your 39th birthday and finishes on your 40th birthday.
So in terms of the millennium the 2000th year commenced at the beginning of 1999 and finished on the 31st December 1999 when the clocked clicked over to 2000.
Rather like filling up with fuel, the 20th litre commences once past 19.00 litres and finishes as the pump clicks from 19.99 litres to 20.00 litres.
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No question as far as I am concerned either.
If you go with the populist view go back to your copy of the Sun or Daily Mail now and read no further.
For those who wish to read a fairly well reasoned explanation - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium
But as with most things in modern life we are driven by the media and marketing forces, and why miss out on the opportunity to have 2 parties ~:)
Pedantry Rules.
Last edited by: sherlock47 on Sat 19 Aug 17 at 10:59
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Wikipedia presents two perspective Sherlock, which do you subscribe to then?
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HC
"Nobody likes a math geek".
Or a "pedantic spoilsport".
So work it out!
Last edited by: sherlock47 on Sat 19 Aug 17 at 11:40
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>> "Nobody likes a math geek".
Or a "pedantic spoilsport".
So work it out!
>>
I started the discussion, you chose to join it, however I am suddenly not interested in your opinion in the slightest. I was hoping for friendly, reasoned debate, perhaps I should have known better, I don't recall you being a source of rancour previously, perhaps that's a reflection on my memory more than your repute.
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WTF
I think that you must have misunderstood something - my self deprecating sense of humor perhaps?
Maybe you had not fully read the wiki article and found where these quotes had come from.
Maybe I should have included a :)
Last edited by: sherlock47 on Sat 19 Aug 17 at 12:03
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OK, perhaps I misunderstood something, I have previously read the Wiki article and did not feel the need to read it again in detail now.
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The problem all derives from the fact that someone rather negligently decided that there was no year 0. So we went straight from 1 BC to 1 AD.
If you'd been born on Christmas day 2000 then your first birthday would have been at the end of 2001, and your 100 years would be up at the end of 2101.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Sat 19 Aug 17 at 12:07
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as manatee intimates, the Millennium celebration of the "next millennium" and was given an additional kicker to do it this way in the public consciousness because of the doomsday Y2K bug scenario. Joe public can "see" a change in his minds when you push the dates in front of his eyes 1999 > 2000
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>> The problem all derives from the fact that someone rather negligently decided that there was no year 0. So we went straight from 1 BC to 1 AD.
>>
That's one perspective, though as the denomination were applied retrospectively it very likely that 1AD was actually 1 year after Christ's birth and the term 1BC was applied erroneously to what should have been called "0". Another view is that it is not clear that only one year elapsed between 1BC and 1AD, again, as the denominations were applied retrospectively (I mean who living in 1BC new that Christ would be born within a year, not even Mary and Joseph;-) ) so it's perhaps quite reasonable to assume that the sequence should be 2BC, 1BC, Christ's birth, 1AD, 2AD etc.
A third perspective is that some suggest that to account for this possible discrepancy it is reasonable to accept that the first millennia MAY have been only 999 years so as to ensure the passing of the millennia are aligned with all other such increments such as the passing of decades, centuries and all other mathematical criteria such as the 20 litres analogy above.
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Blame it on the Romans ? :-(
They had nulla but no zero
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>> but no zero
>>
Lucky them ;-)
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>> >> but no zero
>> Lucky them ;-)
Thats rich coming from mouldy milk
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>>we are talking about time relative to the birth of Christ and that at the time people would have commenced counting at "1" and not at "0" -
No. At that time people would have referred to the number of years' reign of the Emperor, so your argument is completely fallacious. Forty two, according to the Christmas Proclamation:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_Birth_of_Christ
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At the third stroke the time will be: 21st August 4.5 billion AC (after creation) ish! ;-)
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>> No. At that time people would have referred to the number of years' reign of
>> the Emperor, so your argument is completely fallacious. >>
It's not my argument, I have presented a number of different perspectives above though I subscribe to the view that we were correct to celebrate the millennium on 31/12/1999 as the points in my post above (Sat 19 Aug 17 12:26) I think are stronger than any argument that the year "0" did not exist being a reason to celebrate the turn of millennium a year later than the turn of the decade and century.
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From careful analysis of the aromatics emanating from the coagulation of the milk protein casein in this thread, I almost get a hint of fluffy.
Anybody else ?
Was he ever outed?
Last edited by: sherlock47 on Mon 21 Aug 17 at 15:04
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>> From careful analysis >>
>>
So that's why you're called Sherlock, you're on the wrong track on this one tho.
I am simply trying to generate an interesting discussion based on a conversation I had late last week and twice now you have put your boot in.
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"you have put your boot in"
really? if that is your view, god help you if you get on the wrong side of certain other members of this forum.
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>> really? if that is your view, god help you if you get on the wrong
>> side of certain other members of this forum.
>>
I'm just not interested, I left here for five years, in part because I realised that I was spending too much time online and not enough onlife, and in part because of the bickering etc. However I have a lot of respect for some of the long term members and mods who came over from the old HJ site and accordingly looked in every now and then, only getting involved again due a few months ago when I picked up on a post from DP about his new car. Though any s*** and I am off again, and the last thing this place needs is to lose contributors ...
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It has never been my intention to upset you, or drive you away- you have made many worthwhile and interesting contributions. Most well written and thought out. I was not comparing your normal style or erudition with the written style exhibited by Fs early postings.
There was always a suspicion that F was an existing or ex member adopting a manufactured persona, - I just wanted to rattle the cage a little, since I noted a couple of possible similarities. And was trying to see if anybody else had a similar view.
Last edited by: sherlock47 on Mon 21 Aug 17 at 16:28
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>> It has never been my intention to upset you, >>
OK, comments understood and appreciated. Let's leave it at that then and move on.
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>>Was he ever outed?
Don't think so. He just stopped 'appearing', though now you've shaken the tree...........!!!
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>>It's not my argument,
It's exactly your argument. You took the 'there was no year zero' argument and then claimed that people back then would have understood fractions and thus would have called the year of the birth of Christ year zero.
It's completely fallacious as they would have measured by the Emperor's reign, and Bede was wrong anyway.
It's all a rather fluffy argument anyway.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Tue 22 Aug 17 at 11:45
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>> >>It's not my argument,
>>
>> It's exactly your argument. You took the 'there was no year zero' argument and then
>> claimed that people back then would have understood fractions and thus would have called the year of the birth of Christ year zero.
>>
No - I said "... some subscribe to the view that we should have celebrated the millennium on 31st December 2000, and there are apparently a few different arguments for this, one of which is that we are talking about time relative to the birth of Christ and that at the time people would have commenced counting at "1" and not at "0" - I cant say I agree with that as people were familiar with decimal and fractions in those days ..."
So I was presenting a common view on the subject though clearly stated that I don't agree with that view.
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Why would there be a year zero? If I have six eggs, they are eggs 1-6. The is no egg zero. It's a meaningless concept.
At some point, someone/ones decided that a particular day was to be day one of year one. At the end of year 1, 1 year had elapsed. At the end of year 1999, i.e. the start of year 2000, 1999 years had elapsed. So that was a year too early to celebrate the passing of 2 millennia. At the end of year 2000, 2000 years had elapsed. QED.
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>> Why would there be a year zero? If I have six eggs, they are eggs
>> 1-6. The is no egg zero. It's a meaningless concept.
>>
An egg is all or nothing, time is not like that, it could easily have been the case that someone decided that Jesus was born one year, or one summer or whatever ago so today he is one and we'll now count the summers and nine years later it was year ten or nine more summers had passed or whatever and Jesus was now ten years or ten summers.
Rather than eggs a better analogy is with liquids, filling up with fuel you start on 0 and go from 0.01 litre through to 0.99 litres and then you have 1 litre, (you are adding the first litre from 0.01 to 0.99 though you don't have one litre until you are on 1.00 litres) likewise the 20th litre commences once past 19.00 litres and finishes as the pump clicks from 19.99 litres to 20.00.
I was born in the 1900s though it was the 20th century, I am 55 though I'm in my 56th year.
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It doesn't matter whether there is a year zero or not. But if you use a system that doesn't have one then you have to accept the reality that centuries or millennia end at the END of the 000 years, not the beginning.
What's daft is pretending that a millennium has 1000 years when in fact only 999 have elapsed.
I read somewhere that we did in fact celebrate century changes on 1st January 001 until 1900, when the German Kaiser flung his weight around and decided it should be 1900 not 1901, and most of Europe followed suit.
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>> It doesn't matter whether there is a year zero or not. But if you use
>> a system that doesn't have one then you have to accept the reality that centuries
>> or millennia end at the END of the 000 years, not the beginning.>>
But why are years different to say money, kilos, or litres or miles. A baby born yesterday is already in their first year, in a year's time they will be a year and a day though they will be in their second year.
If we were to count the migrations of the lesser spotted dodo we wouldn't start at one, we would start at zero and then count one when a the lesser spotted dodo migration had happened, it's the same with time.
>> What's daft is pretending that a millennium has 1000 years when in fact only 999
>> have elapsed.
>>
True if that were the case though as I said above some suggest that to account for possible discrepancies it is reasonable to accept that the first millennia MAY have been only 999 years so as to ensure the passing of the millennia are aligned with all other such increments such as the passing of decades and centuries.
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" the first millennium MAY have been only 999 years"
Your argument is wriggling like a worm on a hook:)
People want to celebrate round numbers, the ones with a zero on the end, as soon as the calendar turns is the explanation.
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I assume that the last Millennium began on 1st Jan 0000.*
I suppose it lasted 1,000 years.
Wouldn't that rather make it unavoidable that the next millennium began on 01/01/1000 and the one after that on 01/01/2000?
So isn't it undeniable that the last day of last Millennium was the last day of 1999?
* I know, but it would have done.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 22 Aug 17 at 18:01
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>> I assume that the last Millennium began on 1st Jan 0000.*
>>
Yep - I mean people then didn't think then 'oh its a new millennium' though retrospectively that is the date in our calendar that it was decided that the millennium started on, not on 1st Jan 0001, that actually explains it quite well.
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There was never a year Zero. The calendar as devised by a Scythian monk around 500 AD went from 1BC to 1AD with no intervening year. It wasn't widely used for another 300 years when a chap called Bede starting using it it in his Anglo Saxon Chronicle. There is no ambiguity.
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Well...except there is no year 0 - when the (theoretical) clock starts ticking, it is counting its way through the first year. First = 1 to me.
It's all a bit artificial because the year of Jesus's birth was decided/invented some time after the notional clock started. By Dionysius about 500 years later. It is now thought he was about 4 years out, because Herod fell off the perch in 1BC, and of course he was around when Jesus was born. The date of Jesus's birthday, the 25th December, was decreed by Emperor Constantine a couple of hundred years earlier.
And then there have been calendar changes. If we were still using the Julian calendar today would be the 9 August not the 22nd. Greece and Turkey didn't actually dump the Julian calendar until the 1920s . At some point the years must just have been reset because the Julian calendar was invented in 45 BCE (little did Emperor Julian know of course).
Some churches still use the Julian calendar or an adjusted version of it that is actually more accurate than the Gregorian way of doing it with respect to when leap years occur.
But I still don't see how you can celebrate 2000 years when your counter has only just reached 1999.
Not that I am going to fight in a ditch about this, it's just a discussion for the sake of it as far as I am concerned - God knows I'm an atheist:)
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I think it's an interesting discusion, it's good to hear other perspectives, though I still dont see why a year would have been lost when the calendar was agreed. That it was sorted retrospectively surely makes it more likely that when calculating 500AD they would have counted back 500 years, and not 499, in which respect 500 AD back to to 499 AD would be the 1st year and 1AD to 0, or the point Christ was born, would be the 500th year.
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The date of Jesus's birthday, the
>> 25th December, was decreed by Emperor Constantine a couple of hundred years earlier.
Interesting that Constantine should choose Christmas Day to be Jesus's birthday. You'd think he had more to do.... like wrapping pressies and doing the tree !
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> God knows I'm an atheist:)
>>
But he will forgive you for that - that's his job.
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>> " the first millennium MAY have been only 999 years"
>>
>> Your argument is wriggling like a worm on a hook:)
>>
Sorry, again it's not my argument, I have been trying to discuss all perspectives, take a look at my post dated Sat 19 Aug 17 12:26.
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Oh, don't worry, I didn't mean argument as in row. Call it the point of view under discussion if you like.
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Millennium - Manatee
