Quote Originally Posted by bikercelt1
What great info Jimmy! You're really becoming quite the source of information for us. I do have to wonder, however, on the concept of a coin dated 83 b.c.. How would the coin maker know it was 83 years before Christ?
Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy Carbomb
. . . date of the earliest coin was 83 B.C. . . . [stress mine]
The date of the coin, not the date on the coin. There certainly wasn't a standard year system at that time. In fact, there wasn't a standard calendar system either. The Julian calendar didn't come into existance until 46 BC (708 years after the founding of Rome). The custom of counting years from the birth of Christ didn't come about until around 700 CE (AD) (and afterwards, Johannes Kepler calculated the birth of Christ to be 4 BC by the new year counting system, but by then it was too late to change it). The Gregorian calendar, which we use today, wasn't created until 1582; it was created to put the vernal equinox as close to 20 March as possible, in order to make Easter as close to Passover as possible (Passover is celebrated at the full moon of the first month of spring, according to the Jewish calendar). However, although most countries adopted the new Gregorian calendar within a few decades, England and their colonies didn't adopt it until the middle of the 18th century. As well as staying on the Julian calendar so late, England also began the new year on the 25th of March, not the 1st of January, so, for instance, the date of 11 February, 1672, in England would be the same day as 21 February, 1673, on the continent (and as we reckon the date today). For us Americans, that means that while George Washington was born on 11 February, we celebrate his birthday on 22 February (because the Colonies continued to use the Julian calendar as well) because after 1700 the Julian calendar had a leap year and the Gregorian calendar did not, making the difference 11 days. If anyone's read Umberto Eco's book Foucault's Pendulum, this calendar discrepancy plays a role in one portion of the novel.

Make sense now?

Andrew.

Andrew.