Question about the calendar?

Question

What is the basis for the years in the calendar? Why is it 2008? Who invented this calendar, and why is it used everywhere?

Answer 1

Just to note: Anno Domini tranlates solely as "In The Year Of Our Lord", Jesus is clearly who is implied but he is not actually named.

Also historians use BCE and CE as replacements for BC and AD.  It stands for Before Common Era and Common Era.  A nice little nod to the non Christian world population majority.

Answer 2

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. It was first proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, and decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 by papal bull Inter gravissimas. It is a reform of the Julian calendar.

Years in the reformed calendar continue the numbering system of the Julian calendar, which are numbered from the traditional Incarnation year of Jesus, which has been labeled the "anno Domini" (AD) era, and is sometimes labeled the "common era" (CE), otherwise known as the "Christian Era".

The changes made by Gregory corrected the drift in the civil calendar which arose because the mean Julian calendar year (exactly 365 1/4 days) was slightly too long, causing the vernal equinox, and consequently the date on which Easter was being celebrated, to drift slowly forward in relation to the civil calendar and the seasons.

The Gregorian calendar system dropped 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronization with the seasons and, to keep it there, adopted the following leap year rule:

Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100; the centurial years that are exactly divisible by 400 are still leap years. For example, the year 1900 was not a leap year; the year 2000 was a leap year.

In the Julian calendar, all years exactly divisible by 4 are leap years.

Answer 3

The calendar you speak of is the Gregorian calendar, previously known as the Julian calendar.

The epoch of this calendar, that is the "beginning point" is the presumed birthdate of Jesus of Nazareth (Jesus Christ). The epoch and its era were created in the 6th century AD by a Christian monk. According to this monk, Jesus was born about 2,008 years ago today.

All years from 1 forward are referred to as "AD", or "Anno Domini", which is Latin for "In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ". Years before 1 are referred to with "BC", or "Before Christ".

The basic reason that this calendar is used everywhere is because of mass Christianization. And it's much easier economically to use one calendar worldwide than to use several.

Answer 4

The Romans were the first to standardize the years, by counting from the founding of Rome as year 1, throughout the empire.  Prior to that, each city-state had its own method of counting, varying from country to country and sometimes between city-states. (eg, Sparta and Athens would have counted the years differently.)