That’S 2000 Years, But Who’S Counting?

How could there be a debate about something as clear-cut as the start of the new millennium?

Because it’s not as simple as it seems.

To know when the thousandth year of a second millennium ends, everyone must agree when the first year of the first millennium started.

But 2,000 years ago, the calendar we use now didn’t exist. What we regard as the year 1 A.D. was calculated - incorrectly - more than 500 years into that first millennium by a scholarly monk known as Dionysius Exiguus.

At the time, most of what is now Europe used calendars that numbered the years based on the reign of a country’s king or emperor. The Catholic Church kept an official calendar based on the Roman emperors, but the records for some emperors were shaky.

Dionysius estimated the number of years back to the time when the Bible said Jesus was born to come up with 1 A.D., but probably was a few years off. His calculation was used hundreds of years later as calendars were slowly developed and standardized across Europe.

He also used the Roman counting system, which didn’t have the concept of zero, so there is no Year 0 between 1 A.D. and 1 B.C.

So to get a full 1,000 years in, the first millennium must go to 1000 A.D. The second millennium couldn’t start until 1001 A.D., or end until 2000.

One other tiny problem. Not all European countries considered Jan. 1 the first day of the year back when the last millennium rolled over. Some, including England, thought the year began in March, on the first day of spring, which coincided with a religious feast marking the conception of Jesus.

England didn’t officially recognize Jan. 1 as the first day of the year until the 1700s, so English-speaking people who cared - most of them didn’t - would have started their new year, new century and new millennium on March 25.

So technically, the start of the third millennium might be another 84 days off.