Jack of Harts

There are five major calendar systems in use in the world right now.

The Hebrew calendar that goes back over 5,000 years.
The Chinese calendar that goes back over 3,000 years.
The Indian Vikram Samvat system that goes back to great military victory half a century before the birth of Christ.
Our own Gregorian system built on the older Julian system created in the same general time as the Indian system, and that originally pointed back to the foundation of Rome, over seven hundred years before the birth of Christ.
And the Islamic Hijiri system that points back to the foundation of their religion.

All of these calendars predate the concept of the number zero. Measuring nothing was not something we thought about as a people when these calendars were created. There is no Year Zero in any of them. There is a Year One. And the year before that is Year Minus One. Because time is something, and we weren’t measuring zero time.

Most of us have grown up utterly believing in the concept of the number zero. The idea that everything starts at zero and must be counted before it becomes one. But centuries ago, when the calendars that we run our lives on right now were created, we didn’t measure something until it existed. Year One.

We should all consider what that means for all of us.