When you consider the time as a number line, years are not points at integers (which would in some way warrant a year 0), but rather periods between them. Year 1 is the period between 0 and 1, and before that was -1 to 0, or year -1. There is no year 0, because there isn’t anything between 0 and 0
When you consider the time as a number line, years are not points at integers (which would in some way warrant a year 0), but rather periods between them. Year 1 is the period between 0 and 1, and before that was -1 to 0, or year -1. There is no year 0, because there isn’t anything between 0 and 0
This explanation is unclear to me. Why do we choose the later of the two endpoints of the year for (0, 1) but the earlier of the two for (-1, 0)?
Because until the Middle Ages, Europeans were afraid of the number 0.