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How did people living around 2000 years ago date an event that took place 200 years previous, they would not have said 200 BC or in the year.....? How did they keep track of time before calenders?
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They marked time from significant events. For example, 'the fifth year of the Emperor Claudius'. In ancient cultures where astronomical observations were important, these were referred to eg in Ancient Egypt the cycle of the Star Sirius was referred to when ordering events. We don't know how time was marked in cultures that have left no written record, but we can make an intelligent guess that stone circles and henge monuments were used to mark time.
200 years is a long time to retain collective cultural memories with accuracy, so it is likely that an element of mythology or story-telling would creep in. Even the highly literate ancient Romans counted the start of their 500 year-old origins in the Romulus and Remus story. So it is quite feasible that a culture 2000 years ago would account for an event 200 years previously as 'in the time when the great goddess gave birth to the land' etc.
200 years is a long time to retain collective cultural memories with accuracy, so it is likely that an element of mythology or story-telling would creep in. Even the highly literate ancient Romans counted the start of their 500 year-old origins in the Romulus and Remus story. So it is quite feasible that a culture 2000 years ago would account for an event 200 years previously as 'in the time when the great goddess gave birth to the land' etc.
They would have also counted in seasons or moon cycles. It would seem that only recent history was of particular importance to the ancients and any lenght of time would be up to the tribe elders to determine.
Phrases such as "more than 200 summers past" would have been quite common to refer to something very old.
Phrases such as "more than 200 summers past" would have been quite common to refer to something very old.
It's assumed that lunar calendars were the first ones, and have been dated back to before 3000BC. As people've already said, events were timed via moon phases and the position of the stars in the night sky. the Sumerian calendar is one example of this, but was adjusted on a basis of 12 months to the year, to incorporate the two seasons they had - the wet and dry.
http://www.jameswbell.com/a005calendar.html
http://www.jameswbell.com/a005calendar.html
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