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| Joseph Justus Scaliger |
One of the fundamental concerns of civilized man is the study of the past, natural or human. For this, it is necessary to be able to fix the date on which each event took place. This is the goal of a science called chronology.
If the exact date of an
event is known, we can define it by giving the day, month and year in which it
took place. For example, we can say that the Second World War began on
September 1, 1939. We have no problem with the day and the month, but how are
the years numbered? Obviously we must take
an origin or starting point that everybody will agree to use.
This dating system causes a curious effect: the numbers assigned to the years after the origin grow towards the future, while the previous years grow towards the past. Thus, the year 2000 of our era came after the year 1000, but the year 2000 B.C.E. came before 1000 B.C.E. (see below the meaning of these acronyms). The years prior to the origin work as negative numbers.
