Sunday, July 11, 2010

History - first buildings with AD date?

The Roman Empire adopted Christianity around 330 AD. Presumably buildings or other permanent structures like statues started using the new fangled dates around that time.





Are there any records, structures or similar evidence of AD related dates before that time? For example, anything with a date such as 100 AD?





For non-Christians who started using BCE for "before common era", presumably the newer dates were CE, "common era".





What was the earliest usage of CE dating?


Do CE dates exactly mirror AD dates?

History - first buildings with AD date?
The "Anno Domini" designation dates to around 525, but it wasn't in common usage until around the 11th to 14th centuries. It's a recent innovation to put dates on buildings, since in the medieval / Renaissance eras, a large building would be erected over a span of decades. The term "Common Era" was first used in 1615 by Kepler.
Reply:This is incorrect. The "A.D." dating system wasn't adopted in Western Europe until well after the end of the Roman Empire in the West. It was the 8th century when this nomenclature came into use (although it had been devised two centuries earlier). So no Roman buildings would have an "A.D." date on them.


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