Año Cero or Year Zero Does this change 2012

[link to www.shiftoftheages.com]
[link to www.legionxxiv.org]


What does this actually mean? Is 2012 actually 2010-2011 can someone please try and explain


THE NEW MILLENNIUM AND WHY THERE WAS NO YEAR ZERO - BC / AD

Now that the fear of the Armageddon of "Y2K" on January 1, 2000 has passed without major incident; we can now focus on the reasoning for the true beginning of the new Millenium being January 1, 2001. But, have you ever wondered about "Y0K " or considered how and when our "Christian Era" based calendar came into being?

Two thousand years ago, the Year One arrived; but no one knew it, either then or for several centuries thereafter. The 12 months we call 1AD came and went as just another year. To the Romans - who ruled what was then considered the civilized world, and whose civilization would one day be the basis of our own - the year was 754AUC "Ad Urba Condita" ("From the Founding of the City") - 754 being the number of years since Romulus is said to have founded "Rome". Among Rome's Greek subjects, who marked time in four-year units between Olympic Games, the year was merely the first quarter of the 195th Olympiad. Meanwhile, the Chinese saw it as nothing more than the second year of the reign of P'ing-ti, a boy emperor who would die five years later at the age of 13. But to a sixth century monk in Rome, the year ranked as one of the greatest in all history.

Our current numbering of years was instituted around 526 AD, by the Roman and Christian Monk Dionysius Exiguus, aka "Dennis the Little"; based on his estimate of the year when Christ (aka Joshua bar Joseph) had been born. Described as a native Scythian, not much is known of Exiguus; other than he had a great reputation as an avid astronomer and mathematician. The date of Christ's Birth was not considered important until the 2nd Century and up until the time of Exiguus the date of the Resurrection of Christ, (which became associated with the Spring Festival of Easter in the 2nd Century), was still considered more significant than his date of birth; so Exiguus was commissioned by Pope John "The First" to develop a better and more rational method for the annual reckoning of the proper date for Easter. The calendar then in use, dated from the accession of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the year now called 284 AD. But Diocletian had persecuted early Christians, and Dionysius Exiguus had said in a letter to a friend, that he "preferred to count and denote the years from the Incarnation of Our Lord".

By adding together the number of years that the prior Emperors of Rome had reigned, Dionysius Exiguus calculated that Jesus' Birth had occurred 532 years before in the Roman Year 753 AUC (Ab Urba Condita - "From the founding of the City" of Rome); which Exiguus termed as "Anno Domini Nostri Jesu Christi" (Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ's Birth). The Roman year 753 AUC became what we now term as the year 1 BC, with the year 1 AD beginning one week later after December 25th, on January 1, 754 AUC. Exiguus retained the date of December 25, which had already been decreed as the date of Christ's Birth by Emperor Constantine in 1071 AUC - 318 AD and had previously been celebrated as the Festival of Mithras and the Dies Natalis Solis Invictus (Day of the Birth of the Invincible Sun). Dionysius, however, was off by a few years in his calculations; as the postulated date of Christ’s Birth is now considered to have occurred on April 17, 6 BC, about two years prior to the death of Herod, Governor of Judea, in 4 BC, as documented in the Holy Scriptures.

At that time in the Spring of 6 BC (when the shepherds would have logically been in the fields tending their flocks), the planet Jupiter (Star of Zeus) had been rising "In the East" as a morning star, in the constellation of "Ares The Ram", (which to ancient astrologers represented the Kingdom of Judea), and it was also passing very near to the Moon, and was finally eclipsed by the Moon on April 17, 6 BC. Also at about that same time, Jupiter was passing very close to (in conjunction with) the planet Venus - so close that they were observed to have nearly touched each other. These rare and impressive stellar phenomenon were interpreted by the people of the region, and particularly by the "Maji of the East", who were knowledgeable astronomers (and from whom we get our word "Magic"), as an indication for the Birth of a King or a person of great importance in Judea.

Exiguus' new Christian Era based Calendar of 526 AD was not then universally adopted and gradually came into use over time. The AD "Anno Domini" designation of the years after Christ's Birth was instituted by Exiguus. Two centuries later in the early 8th Century, the Britain Benedictine Monk "Venerable" Saint Bede introduced the label "BC" to identify the years preceding "AD". However, it appears that the BC-AD tagging of years did not come into general use until the "High Middle Ages" in 12th or 13th Century (1100's - 1200's).

A "Year-Zero" was not utilized by Exiguus, as at that time in the Western world, counting was done with either Roman Numerals or "fingers", or using the original version of the Abacus developed in Rome (see ABACUS below); neither of which included the concept of a quantity for "Nothing" or the number value of "Zero". Therefore, the sequence of years runs 3BC, 2BC, 1BC, 1AD, 2AD, 3AD, etc. This means that the First Year of the First Millennium was 1AD. The 1000th Year and end of the First Millennium was 1000AD and thus the First Day of the Second Millennium was January 1, 1001. Hence the First Day of the Third Millennium would be January 1, 2001; or 14,007AD, if you are counting in dog years!

It is said or rumored that in the final days of December 999; people huddled and devoutly prayed in their churches and their homes upon the approach of "Y1K" in 1000AD; fearful that the world was coming to an end. This was not unlike our fears over the perceived problems of Y2K. Nostradomus has assured us, however, that the world will not come to an end until a great war in 3797; that is if we manage to survive "Y3K !

The now nearly universally adopted "Arabic" system of numbers, which does include a value for "Zero", appears to have originated with the Hindu's in India during the Fourth Century (301-400) AD. "Zero" came into wider use in the Middle East about 600AD. This system of numbering, now termed "Arabic" was adopted by Arab traders, who brought it to Spain and eventually to all of Europe by around 1000AD.

EARLY ROMAN REPUBLICAN CALENDARS

Romulus, the legendary founder and first ruler of Rome, instituted a 304 day, 10 month long calendar shortly after establishing the City that would bear his name. March / Martius 31 days, named in honor of the god of war "Mars", was the first month of this "Romulus" Calendar. The other nine months were Aprilis 30 days, Maius 31 days, Junius 30 days, Quinctilis 31 days, Sextilis 30 days, September 30 days, October 31 days, November 30 days and December 30 days. The last six names correspond to the Latin words for the ordinal numbers 6 through 10.

In 713 BC / 40 AUC, Ab Urba Condita, "from the Founding of the City" (of Rome), one day was deducted from each of the 30 day months and January / Januarius (29 days) was added to the beginning (prior to Martius) and February / Februarius (28 days) was added to the end (following December) of the original 10 month "Romulus" Calendar, extending it to 12 months and 355 days. The Romans were superstitious about "even" numbers, so taking a day away from the "even" 30 day months to make them an "uneven" 29 days and adding a day to January to make an uneven 29 days (February remained at 28 days) made for an "uneven" 355 day year. However, this revised year was still nine days short of a full solar year. To make the calendar better correspond to the solar year, these extra nine days were inserted as part of the period or month of "Mercedonius / Intercalans". This "intercalary (added to the calendar)" period was inserted between the 23rd and 24th days of February, every other year. The last five days of February apparently became a part of Mercedonius when that month was implemented on the alternate years.

The first day of March (Kalends of Martius) was the original Roman "New Year's Day" until circa 200 BC or 552 AUC, when February was moved between January and March and the First of January (Kalends of Januarius/Ianuarius) became the first day of the then "revised" 12 month Roman Republican Calendar. The Kalends of Martius, however, continued to be a day of significance to the Romans.

JULIAN and GREGORIAN CALENDARS

In 46BC, Julius Caesar further reformed the calendar, adding "leap years" creating the so-called "Julian" Calendar. The Julian year being 365 days in length, was six hours longer than the true solar year. Thus, by the 16th century, the accumulation of surplus time had displaced the Vernal Equinox from March 21st backward to March 11th. The date of March 21st for the Vernal Equinox had been set in the 4th century. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII, in order to rectify this error and better match the Calendar Year to the Solar Year, decreed that the 10 days between October 5th and October 14th be dropped from the year 1582 and further ordained that the Century Years ending in "hundreds" should not be leap years unless they were divisible by 400, such as the Year 2000. The year 1600 was a leap year in both the "Julian" and "Gregorian (reformed)" calendars; but, 1700, 1800 and 1900 were leap years only in the un-reformed Julian calendar. The "Gregorian Reform" was accepted, immediately in most Roman Catholic countries, more gradually in Protestant countries, and in the Eastern Church, the "old" un-reformed Julian calendar was retained into the 20th century. The present, generally accepted calendar is therefore termed the Gregorian, although it is only a slight modification of the Julian.

The Gregorian (reformed Julian) Calendar was not accepted in England and the British colonies in America until 1752. By that date the English calendar was 11 days different from that of continental Europe. Therefore, by decree of the King of England, 11 days were omitted in 1752, when September 2nd was immediately followed by September 14th.

Some OTHER DATING POINTS of world history have been - Creation of the World, 4000BC, the year in which it was once believed the world was created and termed Anno Lucis (AL) "The Year of Light"; or sometimes Anno Mundi (AM) "The Year of the World". The Jewish equivalent of "AL" is 3760 BC, Anno Hebraico or the Byzantine equivalent is 5508 BC. *** The Maya "Long-Count" calendar commencing with the mythical beginning of the Maya Civilization on Aug-13, 3114 BC and extending for a period of 5125 years, postulated to end on Dec-21,2012 *** The Founding of the Olympic Games in Greece in 776 BC, with reckoning in periods of four-year "Olympiads" *** The Founding of the City of Rome, 753 BC, abbreviation AUC - Ab Urba Condita - "From the Founding of the City" *** The Diocletian Calendar of Rome in 1087 AUC or 284 AD *** The "Hegira"(AH - Anno Hegirae), the flight of Mohammad from Mecca in 622 AD *** The Gregorian Calendar of 1582 AD, which is the basic calendar now in general world-wide use.

The JULIAN DAY CALENDAR is a less well known system of astronomical dating, whereby the "difference in days" between any two dates can be calculated mathematically and more directly without using conventional civil calendars with their uneven months and leap years. It is particularly useful in computer data processing when two dates are to be compared for which is greater (more recent) or lower (older) and/or to determine the difference in days between any two dates. It was devised by Joseph Scaliger in 1582 and named in honor of his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger. The Julian period of 7,980 years is a product of the Solar Cycle, the Lunar Cycle and the Roman Calendar Cycle and begins on January 1, 4713 BC, that being the last time when the three cycles most nearly coincided. Dates and days are numbered consecutively from January 1, 4713 BC, regardless of the many calendar revisions that have taken place since that initial date. Thus "Julian Day One" is January 1, 4713 BC, while the Julian Day Number or the number of days elapsed since "Julian Day One" for December 31, 1999 is 2,451,544, January 1, 2000 is 2,451,545, Jan. 2nd is 2,451,546 and so on. The Julian Day begins at Noon, Universal Time (UT), aka Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Zulu Time (ZT), and ends at Noon UT on the following date.

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And now, some other DATE TRIVIA and Please Remember - You Saw It Here FIRST !

In 1752, the eleven days Sept-3 through Sept-13 inclusive, were omitted; when the English speaking world switched from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Reform Calendar. The King of England simply decreed that for the Year 1752 September 2nd would be immediately followed by September 14. And so it was!

Centuries will only begin on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday.

Millennia always begin on Wednesday or Saturday. 2000 began on Saturday. 3000 will begin on Wednesday.

January and October always begin on the same day, except in Leap Years.

February, March and November always begin on the same day, except in Leap Years.

March and November always begin on the same day, regardless of Leap Years.

July always begins on the day before the day of January 1st, except in Leap Years.

September and December always begin on the same day, regardless of Leap Years.

11- 19-1999 was an "Odd" day (every digit is odd), and is the last such day we will ever see.

The next odd day will be 1-1-3111. Zero is considered to be "Even".

2-2-2000, was an "Even" day and was the first such day since 8-28-888.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

Easter was celebrated very early in the Year 2008. Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after the Spring Equinox (which was March 23, 2008). This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that the Hebrew people used to identify The Passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman based calendar.

Based on the above information, Easter can actually be one day earlier, March 22, which is very rare.

March 23, 2008 was the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives! And only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or above). And none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier!

The next time Easter will be as early as March 23rd will be in the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was that early was 1913. So if you're 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!.

The next time Easter will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. So, no one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier than this year