On Tuesday, 15 March 2016 16:04:53 UTC, Brian Lawrence wrote:
On 15/03/2016 14:45, Weatherlawyer wrote:
On Tuesday, 15 March 2016 11:02:50 UTC, Brian Lawrence wrote:
On 14/03/2016 15:52, Asha Santon wrote:

Disclaimer: This is a serious question which has everything to do with
how to count and nothing to do with religious beliefs. I ask it here
because some wise heads are present.

The date 1AD refers to the year a man I will call Yesus was born. It is
irrelevant whether it actually happened or not. Most of the world did
not know about it at the time anyway.

News of the event did not reach the British Isles for a very long time
so my question is this:

In the British Isles during the year we now call 1AD, what was the date
(year only)?

I don't even know how to look it up.
I am aware of the Gregorian, Julian, and AUC calendars but I don't want
to know what the date was in Rome.

The simple answer would be that at that time years would not be numbered
at all. The indigenous population would have had no need to know what
the year was, although they may have had some concept of their own age
or that of relatives. Ages would probably be related to 'x summers'.
The pre-Roman population can be characterised as Iron Age Britons
(mostly Celts). They are estimated to have numbered between 3 & 4
million (1stC BC).

Tribal elders may have kept some form of record which may have been
related to the number of years since an important event happened -
possibly when a village or tribal leader (or king) assumed 'office'.
Britain's tribal kings had mostly been allied to Rome since Caesars
so-called invasions over 50 years earlier, and might have used the Roman
calendar (revised by Julias Caesar in 46BC, hence the Julian Calendar),
but again the years were not numbered in the old BC style.

At that time the Romans identifed years by naming them after the two
consuls who took office during the year. This was known as the consular
year. They also used the regnal year of the Emperor. Occasionally they
might have used the number of years since the founding of Rome, or ab
urba condita (AUC).

[snipped my next paragraph which has been garbled beyond recognition]

Radio carbon dating goes back over 500 years and proves that people had the IQ rating
one might find in an exceptional primary school these days;

I was going to point out that radiocarbon dating was first developed in
the 1940s which wasn't 500 years ago, but OTOH it has been used to date
samples which were well over 10,000 years old. It cannot be used to
determine IQ in any circumstances. But then I read further ....

and realised it would be futile to continue :-)

You deserved that for suggesting my ancestors were monkeys. What are you dawlish?

No hard feeling I hope but radio carbon dating will only work if regeneration of nuclear particles doesn't happen deep underground. In fact all isotope dating depends on something we are more or less all ignorant about yet stupidly willing to accept.

That sort of attitude might be expected from a flowerpotman but this is UK Sci weather.

Some of us are British and some of us are sentient. Some of us but by no means all, are even interested in the weather. For the rest, it all stopped at the Reading Room Exit door.

Just because there were people on the planet who remained unaware of the importance of the date the first year began it doesn't follow that any of them were as stoooopid as, for a perfect example, a Paul Garvey meme.

What we have gained in our ability to make war with weapons of mass destruction we have lost in the ability to feed ourselves. Just exactly who are the stupid?