I just realized how clever BCE (before common era) is. Because we literally don’t know when “history” started, someone came along & was just basically like: “Well we need numbers that go on forever in both directions, because we don’t know how far back history goes back & we don’t know how far ahead history will go. Sooo, has anyone seen a number line with both positive & negative numbers? Because I feel like that’s our answer. It goes on forever in both directions.” I mean I just think this is a super clever solution to this problem & I never really gave it enough thought to appreciate that.
















