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Religion was important to all cultures at some point in history, and in the history of the western world, life was centered around Jesus Christ for a long time, and they kept track of the years by counting the number of years since Jesus´s death. That is where the letters AD come from, they stand for after death. When anthropologists began digging up things that happened before Jesus was born, the most sensible way to keep track of the years in which they happened was to count backwards from the same reference point, and that is where the letters BC come from. They stand for before Christ. Although religion is not as central to our culture as it used to be, we retain the same method of keeping track of the years that was started a long time ago.

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17y ago

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