A Year to Remember

I recently heard someone use the term B.C. and I realized that is now an archaic term. B.C. in most historic circles refers to the time Before Christ. The reason this is archaic is that not all faiths or lack of faiths on earth recognize the Christ time as significant. So now it is proper to use the term B.C.E. or Before Common Era. A.D. standing for Anno Domini, “The year of the Lord” is archaic and replaced C.E., ”Common Era”, which is the scientific preferred use unless the years deemed as BC and AD directly relate to Jesus. Some incorrectly think A.D. means “After Death” of Christ, which puts them at odds with the rest of the calendar by 33 years.

If this doesn’t spur some confusion, consider the use of a year descriptor A.U.C. or A.U. which comes from Ab Urbe Condita which is Latin for the founding of the city of Rome, which was roughly 753 B.C.E.

If that isn’t enough there is always the Mayan Calendar which runs from 11 August, 3114 B.C.E. to the year 2012 C.E.
However, according to "accepted history" the first clearly “Maya” settlements were established in approximately 1800 B.C.E. of the Pacific Coast and were totally replaced by the Spanish in 1697 C.E.

2010 is Year 4707 in the Chinese Calendar. 2010 is also year 5570 in the Jewish calendar which makes me wonder what the Jews were eating for the first 863. I can just hear the entire culture shout “mazal tov “when the first Chinese restaurant opened on the East Side.