Most cultures start the calculation of their time with an event that was important for them. For the Christians this was the birth of Jesus Christ. The year of birth of Christ is also known as ‘turn of the eras’ because there is a belief among the Christians that with the birth of Jesus Christ a ‘new time’ started. The counting of years was started again from one after this time. Everything that happened earlier was specified as ‘before Christ’ or ‘BC’. The Islamic calendar starts when the Prophet Mohammed left Mecca in AD 622. In addition, one year of the Islamic calendar is shorter than that of the Christian calendar since it ends after nine new moons. On July 20, 2012, the calendar of the Muslims will show September 1, 1433, and hence the first day of the fasting month of Ramadan.
Category History
How do we know about the past?
Mainly the archaeologists or the historians are the people who make an attempt to find out about our past as much as they can. The historians frequently refer to various sources of history. These sources can be clay tablets, grave inscriptions, or simple letters. Sometimes they have to decode the script, such as the hieroglyphs, which was discovered in the Egyptian pyramids. Archaeologists, on the other hand dig places where they can find evidence of past human activity such as bones from the Stone Age or remains of buildings or vessels that fell down in wells.
Why is it important to know about the past?
Past helps us in understanding our present world in a much better way. If we know how our ancestors lived or why the wars were waged, we can understand the today’s world better and get ideas for a fairer future. What appears to us as wrong today could have been right earlier. It is also interesting to know how inventions in the past improved the life of humans. Some major inventions that changed the way we live are: metal processing that was invented around 5000 BC and the invention of the calendar, without which we cannot determine when the important events happened in the past.